Ragnarok
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash. Draco, at thirty, is the youngest member of the Wizengamot, and thinks he's arrived at the height of power. But that's before he learns the secret of Ragnarok, the elite corps of wizards that serves the Wizengamot. COMPLETE.
1. Attack

**Title: **Ragnarok

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco

**Rating: **R

**Warnings:** Heavy violence, gore, sex, angst, manipulation, discussion of suicide, arguably Dark versions of both characters. Ignores the epilogue.

**Summary: **Draco Malfoy, at thirty, is the youngest member of the Wizengamot. He thinks he has achieved the highest political power of which he's capable—until he learns the secret of Ragnarok, the elite corps of wizards who deal with "unsolvable" problems for the Wizengamot.

**Author's Notes: **This will be, I think, a fairly short story, somewhere between 12 and 15 chapters, and perhaps even shorter than that. It involves fairly cynical versions of the characters. The title is the name of the event that, in Norse mythology, was supposed to kill the gods.

**Ragnarok**

_Chapter One—Attack_

"Kneel before me, Draco Malfoy, newest initiate into the Wizengamot."

Draco dropped to one knee, keeping his eyes down. It should technically have been both of his knees that touched the floor, but he wasn't about to make such a complete sign of submission if he could get away with a lesser one.

Either it was permissible, or none of the people surrounding him noticed. Knowing their subtlety and the way they had essentially seized political power in the wizarding world in the last ten years, Draco knew which one he was betting on.

He didn't look up, but he knew who had stepped in front of him from the snowy white color of his robes and his heavy boots, made to help him with several foot problems. Algernon Risidell, his sponsor into the Wizengamot, placed both hands on Draco's forehead and pressed down hard enough to make him grunt with discomfort. Draco gritted his teeth and ignored the temptation to fold under those hands and kneel further, or fall. Risidell had warned him that he would suffer tests like this. To show weakness might not deter the others from accepting him into the Wizengamot, but it would affect their opinion of him. Draco wasn't about to risk that.

"Draco Malfoy comes before us as a candidate for the Wizengamot," Risidell said, his words deep and echoing. Draco suspected that was a property of the iron chamber they had entered, rather than of Risidell's own voice, but he couldn't be sure. It was another thing he would have to learn.

He had trained his eyes and his nose and his ears to the highest level of acuity they were capable of, he sometimes thought, and then something like this happened. If he hadn't been able to sense acoustic enchantments on the chamber in the brief look he'd had at it before he kneeled, he would require more training.

"What are his qualities?" demanded a woman's voice from the side, soft and husky with age. Draco knew where she was standing—six paces to the right from him and one forwards—though he had never met her and so couldn't identify her.

"Courage, strength of will, political knowledge, and diplomacy," said Risidell. He hadn't told Draco if that was a ritual answer or one that each sponsor had to come up with on his own.

Draco mentally completed the list. _Ruthlessness, a daring that lets him take risks, pride, a hunger for power. _He smiled, and knew that no one would see it because of the way in which Risidell was forcing his head down. _A knowledge of how to use that power once he has it. _He thought that last quality rarer than all the rest.

The woman grunted, but another voice took up the chorus of questioning. "Why should we admit him to our sacred ranks? Can he truly govern the wizarding world? Can he move with us in the stately dance of politics? He is so young."

Draco didn't let them see him tense. After all, he had expected opposition based on his age. He was only thirty, and most of the Wizengamot members—although not all—far older. And most of the younger ones had got in on the basis of blood.

"He has danced well enough so far to permit us to take notice of him," said Risidell mildly. "He has offered private advice in several crises that has proven to be invaluable. He has showed that he is his father's son in the ways that matter, while not having his father's necessary but regrettable other qualities."

Draco still fought the temptation to flinch whenever he heard someone mention his father, but he knew that such a source of weakness would prove an irresistible target to the other members of the Wizengamot. He would have to learn how to shield it, and quickly.

Besides, he had done what no other Malfoy had done in generations and become one of the powers of the wizarding world himself, rather than the power behind the throne. Notes and autobiographies and memoirs from many of Draco's ancestors indicated that they had done that because they thought it safer.

_Or because, _thought Draco, who had learned to read between the lines, _they were afraid of what they might find if they dug into their own souls, looking for the true ore._

"What brings you to support him?" demanded someone else, behind Draco and to the left, who sounded agitated enough that Draco immediately deduced this was _not _a ritual question. "His money? His looks? His friendliness to yourself?"

Risidell laughed heartily. "His ancestors and mine had spats centuries ago," he said. "It's hardly friendliness. And you know that his name is involved with mine, now that I've sponsored him for the Wizengamot. If he fails, I take a blow and lose some prestige. I would not sponsor anyone I thought could not stand the strain."

Draco took a slow, easy breath. _Remember that, _he told himself. _Risidell wouldn't risk his own power simply to bring in someone he was infatuated by. Because you fear something like that happening does not mean it would._

"It could still be his money," said the same voice, gruff and low and with a snarl in the back of its tones that said its owner got upset fairly often. Draco mentally marked it off for remembrance at a later date. He didn't think the ceremony was supposed to function this way, but it was giving him a list of his enemies.

Of course, most initiates were probably presumed to be so overawed and cowered by the ritual that they couldn't think such things.

"He doesn't have enough left to tempt me after the reparations that the Ministry made his family pay," Risidell said, with what Draco thought was remarkable honesty until he reflected on the people present in the room. Risidell was speaking a warning to his colleagues and also to Draco, in case Draco thought to influence him with gifts or bribes. "He has recovered some of that fortune through his own ingenuity, but he is hardly the richest of us."

Draco smiled again. He could have been, but he had found better things to spend the money on than decorating the insides of his vaults. When he shifted, he could feel the thrum of those things through his muscles.

"I, for one, have no objections," said a woman's voice, so warm that Draco thought for one moment she must be a singer. But he knew of no singers currently on the Wizengamot. She might be related to one, though. "I hope that Mr. Malfoy feels welcome among us and will consider us his allies."

Draco would remember that voice, too, though he suspected the offer of alliance would be less sincere when he was standing before her.

"Of course you don't, Melisande," someone else said from the side, his voice small and weak and disgusted. The singing voice laughed at him, and from the silence that followed, Draco had no doubt who had won that encounter.

"Does anyone else have objections?" Risidell asked, with a gentle emphasis on the word "else." No one seemed to, or else they restricted it to mutters too quiet for even Draco's enhanced ears to hear. Risidell moved back from Draco, taking first one hand and then the other from his forehead. "Rise, Draco Malfoy, member of the Wizengamot."

As Draco stood, someone behind him moved forwards to drape the ceremonial white cloak with a blue lining around his shoulders. Draco turned his head, catching her in the act. She paused and smiled at him, and spoke in the singing voice. "Welcome, Mr. Malfoy. I do look forward to the offer of alliance."

Draco recognized her now, and felt stupid for not doing it simply from the voice. Melisande Gilfleur was the most publically famous member of the Wizengamot, a tall woman with long blonde hair, eyes of a stunning green, and the ability to make public speeches that caused the newspapers and the public both to fall prostrate in front of her. Draco had seen and heard her numerous times.

_It's the iron chamber that caused the difference and made her unrecognizable, _Draco told himself defensively, though he suspected not, and made a little bow to her. "Thank you, Madam Gilfleur, and thank you for defending me."

She smiled, murmured, "Who could not?" and then moved aside. Draco turned in a slow circle, the way Risidell had told him he should after he was confirmed, so that everyone could see him. It also gave him a chance to get a look at the Wizengamot, and identify the position of the voices who had opposed his initiation.

The husky witch's voice that had spoken first, he thought, belonged to an older woman, probably past her hundredth year, who stood with her hands folded into her sleeves and simply looked at him when Draco nodded. She had straggling iron-grey hair and a mouth that could sour sugar. Draco asked Gilfleur in an undertone for an introduction, and she glanced back and forth between him and the woman with a faint, knowing smile.

"She's Madam Henrietta Yvers, dear," Gilfleur murmured. "And she thinks anyone under fifty ought to be shut up in a cage to teach them discipline, with the prohibition extended to sixty in special cases. I wouldn't let her trouble you."

Draco didn't like the idea that Gilfleur could see he was troubled, so he turned back to the direction of the voice that had asked why Risidell was supporting him.

That didn't take a lot of searching, either. There was really only one man it could have been, and he was leaning back against the wall of the chamber near the entrance, his arms folded, not bothering to clap. His gaze was hostile enough to score lines into Draco's skin if eyes were weapons. Draco smiled at him, and he turned his head away, snorted, and spat on the floor.

"And _that's _Mr. Jasper Kellerston," said Gilfleur, with a sad shake of her head. "He still can't let the grudges from the war go."

"What grudge from the war is that?" Draco murmured. Risidell was waving him forwards, out of the chamber, to take advantage of the food and wine he had promised Draco would be waiting for him in another room. Draco studied Kellerston intently in the moment or so he had, memorizing his blue eyes and the hooked shape of his nose, which were the most distinctive things about him.

"He claims that your father was part of a group which attacked and destroyed his family, soon after You-Know-Who's second return." Gilfleur pressed heavily down on Draco's arm for a moment, though her hand was hidden by the folds of their sleeves, so that Draco didn't think anyone could see. Her voice didn't change tone or volume, but, joined by the pressure of her hand, Draco would have been a fool to mistake the warning in it. "He's been known to become a little…violent in demanding redress for that attack."

"Surely most of the Death Eaters must be in prison by now," Draco murmured. _Or withdrawn so far into the past that they wouldn't know what the present was if it tried to introduce itself. _That was what had happened to his father. He was still at home, because Draco considered he would get better care from the house-elves than if Draco sent him to an asylum of some sort, but there was no fearing—or hoping—that he would ever be a political force again. "Almost fifteen years after the attack?"

"Fourteen," Gilfleur said, with the absent smile of someone passing on ancient gossip. "The problem is that there's no evidence of who the Death Eaters were, you see; the only way to find out for certain would be questioning most of the suspects with Veritaserum. And only Kellerston is in favor of that."

Draco had time to nod and wonder why she was being so helpful—well, of course she wanted something, but he hadn't yet had time to figure out what—before Risidell swooped up to him and took his arm. "Come with me, dear Draco," he purred. "We have so much to show you."

Draco willingly followed him, with a nod of his head to Madam Gilfleur. He could feel his heartbeat making his throat thick, and he could have used something to drink or food in his stomach to settle himself. His head was spinning.

This was one of the reasons he had chosen to become part of the Wizengamot rather than running for Minister. The Minister had had little power in the past ten years, as the Wizengamot claimed most of his duties and responsibilities behind the scenes. Among those duties was the possession of secrets that most of the people outside the higher circles of power barely knew existed, or didn't know existed at all.

Draco was about to learn them, and other people would not _know_.

He took care to keep some distance between his body and Risidell's as they passed out of the iron chamber into the maze of corridors that occupied the ground floor of the Wizengamot's headquarters. He didn't think the older man would understand the source of his half-erection. No one who had never succumbed to the dizzying lure of power would.

* * *

"You understand our philosophy now," Risidell said, as he closed the door on the room full of files hinting at alliances with wizarding groups all over Europe. "The Ministry floundered after Scrimgeour died during the war because, at the time, it was believed that only one person should be in possession of all our government's secrets. But what happens when that one person is killed? Chaos." Risidell shook his head, with a grim expression that told Draco he sincerely thought chaos worse than any damage someone with the Wizengamot's secrets in his head might do. "This way, if one of us dies, there are still many others who know what needs to be done. And the same thing if one of us turns traitor."

Draco nodded. His spinning head had calmed, and he no longer felt the need of food; he was almost replete with all the secrets he had seen so far.

There was still one, though, that he had wished to know since he turned his attention to the Wizengamot a decade ago. He had first heard of their existence then, or rather heard whispers and rumors of their existence. Risidell hadn't shown it to him so far, and Draco had to wonder if this wasn't just a legend, like a few of the other secrets he had asked about and Risidell had explained were reflections of wizarding society's paranoia.

But he wouldn't know if he didn't ask.

"What about Ragnarok?" he asked, just as Risidell started to guide him down a wide corridor with white stones set into the walls in an apparently random pattern. It wouldn't be _really _random, Draco knew. Not in the Wizengamot.

Risidell actually missed a step, and then turned a speculative glance on him. Draco saw the gleam of his eye and knew Risidell would be a bad enemy if he had cause to make him so. Draco tried to look back with respect and calm acceptance at the same time. He would be a worse enemy, and he didn't mind Risidell knowing that.

"I'm impressed, Mr. Malfoy," Risidell said, and smiled a moment later. "Very few people hear about Ragnarok before they manage to become part of us."

Draco accepted the compliment with a smile and an inclination of his head, never taking his eyes from Risidell's face. He knew the man had sponsored him because Draco had convinced him he would be a good ally who'd vote as Risidell did on most matters. It was an alliance of mutual satisfaction so far. No reason for that to change, but it would, beneath the surface, if Risidell refused to tell him the truth about Ragnarok. Draco had a fascination with the secret he knew was almost childish.

"What you may have heard is quite true," Risidell said, and seemed to gather his courage around him. Draco deduced that he thought he had little to lose with telling the truth, since Draco already knew about Ragnarok's existence. "We call on Ragnarok when we need rising Dark Lords put down, or when we _know _that someone is guilty but we cannot deal with him by other means, or when a Dark artifact or spellbook is discovered that the Department of Mysteries cannot contain. The goal is annihilation, and to that end, the wizard who works as Ragnarok uses his magic to destroy, utterly, all trace of the danger. If it was a Dark Lord, for example, Ragnarok would eliminate the magical knowledge and the knowledge of his habits in the minds of his followers as well as the Dark Lord himself."

Draco had picked up on the central point in that speech, the only one—other than Ragnarok's specific duties—that he had not known already. "Wizard?" he asked quietly. "The rumors I heard said that Ragnarok was an elite group."

The smile Risidell gave him proved that admitting that was the right move. It let Risidell fell superior in the possession of one secret, and less threatened than he would have been if Draco had known everything already. Draco smiled back and concealed the interest that made his blood sting along his veins.

"It suits us to let our enemies imagine this is an elite group," Risidell admitted. "That way, they're more likely to look over their shoulders and assume that what hunts them—if they're the kind of criminal who would have heard of Ragnarok at all—is a group of well-trained wizards they'll need to watch out constantly for. They might be able to take down one, but not all of them. Instead, we have a single wizard so powerful that his magic eats up everything it touches."

Draco restrained a moan with difficulty. He was fully hard now, and was grateful that Risidell was walking a pace in front of him and unlikely to see or feel. His voice was breathy when he asked, "Who is it?" but that couldn't be helped.

Risidell paused and looked back at him. Then he murmured, "I hadn't intended to tell you this the first day. But why not?" He led Draco swiftly around a few more corners, until they fetched up before a wooden door bound in gold and lead. The tingle of the wards around it made Draco's hair start to rise three feet away.

"He has to have such protections because of his own magic," Risidell said. "It pours in a torrent through his body, and it would destroy this building every time he was angry or had a nightmare if not for the wards. We experimented with shields until we came up with ones he couldn't destroy."

Draco discreetly squeezed his cock when Risidell's back was turned. He watched closely as Risidell took down the wards, but he couldn't see how it was accomplished. Risidell made a single gesture, spoke a single incantation, and lowered them—and Draco had to admit that was more sensible than working through the hour or so it would take to dissipate all those immensely powerful spells one by one.

The magic burst from behind the door the minute it opened. Draco held his breath as it swirled around him, cold and uncaring as a river in full flood. Yes, he could see why Risidell had called it a torrent.

"What happened to make him this way?" he asked as he followed Risidell into the room beyond. It was dim, he could see at a glance, as if whoever lived here preferred the light of a single fireplace to anything more.

Risidell shrugged in a way that indicated he was either unconcerned about the answer or too used to it to bother worrying. "A ritual of some kind. He interrupted it while it was in progress. It was meant to grant power to some Dark wizard or another, but instead it raised his own magic."

Draco held his breath this time for a different reason. He had been through such rituals himself. He wondered if whoever lived here would be able to sense that.

"Come in and shut the door if you're coming."

Draco _knew _the voice. He couldn't place it, but he knew it. He was whirling to face the chair in front of the fire, the one that had its back to them, before the figure rose from it.

A tall, slender man in black clothes, shirt that stretched taut over his muscles and trousers that bulged as though he carried more than one wand in the pockets. A face that looked at them without welcome or caring, without an expression, in a way that Draco thought the more practiced Wizengamot members would have envied. Green eyes that looked as if they could watch the world burn and not care.

"Potter," Draco whispered, and his heartbeat and his hunger spiraled wildly through him.

* * *

Harry wasn't surprised to see that Malfoy wore a Wizengamot member's cloak. He had always thought that the little bastard would find his way into the circles of power. A surprise that it had happened so soon, perhaps, but since he didn't have much interest in anything beyond his approaching death, he couldn't care about that, either.

And then something came along that _did _interest him.

Risidell was speaking, giving Malfoy the speech that was meant to impress all the new members. Malfoy listened to it without taking his eyes from Harry. His nostrils flared and his shoulders quivered with his emotion, but Harry could look straight through his body and into what lay inside it.

Malfoy contained magic. It leaped and dodged and circled inside him, a wild, red-gold power constantly seeking a way out. But he had it contained, somehow, in stronger bonds than Harry had managed to ever contain his own magic in.

He had gone through rituals of the same kind that Harry had, but Harry had no doubt that it had been done willingly in his case, in quest of greater power.

Harry licked his lips. Malfoy's lips drew back in response. Harry had no idea what was in his own face, but a reaction of Malfoy's sort was what he was looking for.

He needed to get rid of his magic before it destroyed his body. He had researched until he wanted to die simply of exhaustion, but all the spells or rituals he could uncover needed two people to perform, the other near his own level of strength. He had never found anyone like that, and so it had seemed simpler to give up in despair.

But if Malfoy was like that…

Harry bowed when Risidell said they had to leave and took his seat before the fire again, already planning. It would be easy enough to contact Malfoy again. It seemed likely that he would be drawn back soon, attracted to Harry's magic. It took some people like that, and while Harry usually disdained them, he would use Malfoy as hard as he could.

Sitting there in silence, he could feel his magic eating away at his joints, at his organs, at his bones. The human body was never meant to be the conduit of forces so elemental, and he was dying from the inside out. That he had lasted ten years was more of a miracle than he'd had a right to expect.

Harry had taken a career as the Wizengamot's enforcer because it was the only career that would suit the endless destructiveness of his magic—well, the only one that would do that and potentially help the wizarding world at the same time. He'd lived in silence, under the lie that he had emigrated to Australia when he was twenty, sick of all the fame and in search of a better life. The Wizengamot had deflected the attention from him in the last decade, certainly.

But Harry would have given much to live with the fame instead of with the magic.

Now, it seemed he might have the chance.

And if it turned out to be a fool's delusion, well, he might find the courage to overcome hope and stubborn resistance together, go out into some deserted patch of country where his dying agonies wouldn't destroy everything, and kill himself at last.


	2. Strike

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—Strike_

"You look stricken, still."

Draco lowered his eyes to his plate and managed to pull himself together. He and Risidell were finishing the day of his initiation into the Wizengamot with a private meal so that they could discuss those matters the rest of the Wizengamot didn't need to know about, and Draco had thought he was sufficiently over his shock at seeing Potter as power source and slave to the wizarding government.

"It _is _a shock," he said truthfully. "I believed the rumors that Potter had emigrated to Australia like all the rest of them, and I'm cursing my gullibility." He felt free to look back at Risidell, now that he thought he had mastered the expression on his face. "And then again, his power. All he did was walk into the middle of a ritual?"

Risidell seemed to mistake the eagerness in his voice for envy, rather than simple desire to know more about Potter. He leaned forwards with a frown. "Yes, but it's a miracle he survived. I wouldn't seek to try it for yourself. As it is, the magic is probably going to kill him in a year or two."

Draco cocked his head to the side and took a sip of the very fine drink, somewhere between fruit juice and wine, that Risidell's house-elves had provided. This room was nearly as large and dim as the cavern where they kept Potter, though the walls were wood instead of stone and there were several fires to throw light and shadow on the floor. Draco watched their dance for a long moment before he answered. That helped conceal the shock of Risidell's words. "I wouldn't think anything could kill someone as strong as he seemed."

"It's the magic itself that's doing it," Risidell said, shaking his head. "We've had a few Healers in to see him—under strictest secrecy, of course—and they agree that he's aging faster than normal. He has to use strength that would normally be used to maintain his bones and heart and so on simply to resist the onslaught of the magic."

And just like that, on a platter, was handed Draco's excuse to contact Potter and get him to listen to him. He hid another smile in his glass and leaned back in his chair, stretching with unfeigned pleasure. Risidell didn't live in ostentatious luxury, but he knew how to use his money. The chairs were comfortable, the table polished, the food excellent. Draco was going to have a life like this now—well, in truth, he had it already, if he wanted to husband his money and buy better furniture.

But he was interested in other things instead. Such as how to get Potter closer, to feed off his power if he could, or draw on it. Draco had no interest in dying because of a misguided ritual. But he didn't think it had to be that way. After all, he was not so much weaker than Potter, and he had his power perfectly under control.

"How do you decide when a problem needs Ragnarok's touch?" he asked. "I can see where using Potter to handle a criminal who was reluctant to consent to arrest would be overkill, but what about when you don't know how dangerous someone is yet?"

Risidell narrowed his eyes. "It's less difficult than you perhaps imagine," he said. "Which does not mean that I urge you to do it."

Draco leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily. So Risidell had noticed some of Draco's attraction to power, though he couldn't have seen the extremity of it or he probably wouldn't be so calm. "I don't have any enemies who are rising Dark Lords yet, and all the Malfoy heirlooms I own have remained safely in my family's control for centuries. But my enemies will be the Wizengamot's enemies now. How _do _you decide?"

Risidell hesitated, spinning his glass between his fingers. Draco put on his most benign expression, silently encouraging the man to do something that he probably would end up having to do anyway.

Or Draco would learn the truth from Potter himself when he contacted him, but he knew he shouldn't trouble Risidell with the confession of that.

"As I said, it's relatively simple," Risidell murmured with a shake of his head. "Potter's magic is extremely powerful, yes, but limited in what it can do. We think that's a consequence of the ritual going wrong. He can _only_ destroy. Not cast household cleaning charms, or glamours, or defensive spells. We send him in when we want something annihilated. Or someone," he said, and cast Draco a grave look. "You can see how serious a decision that must be."

Draco cast his eyes down and leaned back further towards the nearest fire, hoping that Risidell would think his immediate flush a consequence of being too close to the flames. He had barely stifled the moan in time.

It didn't matter that Potter's power was limited to one specific area. It was still so strong that Draco would have liked to be touching himself when he thought about it.

"Who makes the decision to use Ragnarok?" he asked. "The whole of the Wizengamot, or you, or some other person, or is there a smaller committee in the middle of the Wizengamot that handles chores like that?"

He could see Risidell relaxing. It sounded as though his questions were leading towards more general topics, he knew, and that would content Risidell. The man doubtless thought him obsessed with Potter.

And Draco was, in a way. The other secrets he had been so proud to learn were so much dust blowing in the wind compared with this. He had been happy and excited to become part of the Wizengamot because that would mean he had a position of the highest power and influence in the British wizarding world as he understood it.

But there was another part of the British wizarding world he knew about now. He wouldn't scold himself for failing to aspire to it when he hadn't known it existed. He would never forgive himself if he didn't aspire to control over or alliance with it now.

"The whole Wizengamot has to make the decision, though of course anyone can bring up the information that might lead to him being used," Risidell explained, leaning back in his chair in return. He was drinking ordinary wine, and he closed his eyes in pleasure after he finished one sip. That gave Draco a chance to discreetly adjust himself. He hoped that his reaction to Potter would gradually grow less intense, or it could prove a distraction. "If you learn about a wizard who calls himself a Dark Lord, or that a legendary artifact has reappeared and defied the control of the Department of Mysteries, feel free to propose his use."

Draco drank thoughtfully, noting the terms that Risidell had used to talk about Potter. His "use," and he often called Ragnarok an "it." Draco licked his lips. It seemed as though Risidell regarded Potter as no more than a weapon. Draco had no idea how widespread his attitude might be throughout the Wizengamot, but it must be fairly common. _Someone _would have treated Potter like a person and forged an alliance with him for personal gain in return.

That no one had yet simply meant Draco was the lucky person who could step into that gap.

"Interesting," Draco said, and then turned the conversation to other matters. He could learn from Potter himself whether Risidell was the only one who could open the door that led to Potter's domain, or what the means of entrance were. Draco was sure that Potter would be receptive to what he was proposing. Who wouldn't want to find a way to avoid death?

And on a less professional level, Draco had other—skills—that might persuade Potter to agree.

* * *

_He could hear voices behind him shouting for him to stop running, that they would catch up in a minute and he had no right to outdistance them, but Harry ignored them. They were so _far _behind him. He was going to beat them all to the poor victim being tortured and stop the Death Eaters from inducting someone new into their ranks. Everyone knew a new Death Eater had to torture someone to death before he was allowed in._

_The closer he got to the cavern, the more magic Harry could feel. That made him just set his jaw harder and run faster. Magical torture was far less endurable than the ordinary kind. It was a wonder that the victim wasn't dead yet._

_A dazzle of light, that of fire and star and torch, blasted his eyes as he burst into the cavern. Because of it, Harry stumbled forwards, drawing his wand and casting random curses at the dark shapes he could see. Two of them fell, and he nodded. If the watching Death Eaters had to deal with someone coming unexpectedly among them, then it wasn't a true initiation, which needed all the witnesses to watch it all the way through._

_He wasn't sure if he had got the torturer, though, and surged further forwards, stumbling and blinking frantically as he tried to let his eyes adjust. _

_His foot crossed the edge of what felt like a summoning ring._

_All the power in the universe surged up and hit him at once. _

_Harry fell with a strangled cry. When he tried to recover his balance, there was a sense of walls pressing in around him, panels made of down and iron. He flailed and circled, having the humiliating sensation that he was tumbling about on his arse, in the full view and laughter of the Death Eaters. Someone could kill him at any time. He found his wand and tried to cast a light spell that he hoped would blind them much as he was blinded at that moment. He might have a chance if they were on equal footing._

_ That was when something came along and changed his magic._

_ It felt as though someone had plucked the power out of him and set it back in the wrong place, tilted sideways or in a hole that was too small for it. Harry moaned, less from pain than from the sheer wrongness of it, and bent down, trying to shield his head and his body against—he didn't know what._

_ The wrong magic took a deep breath and then pulsed out to fill the newly available space in his body._

_ Harry screamed. He was in the middle of a flood, filled with more magic than he knew what to do with, and he knew that he was going to die. Worse, so was the victim that he had come to save, the person being tortured._

_ A dim realization was trying to come home to him, something that was important, but more important was saving whoever the victim had been. Harry lashed out with his hand, hoping to keep the enemies he was sure were closing in on him away._

_ There came a dull, hollow boom. Harry felt a brief backlash of heat and heard a crisping sound. Then came the smell of frying flesh._

_ And silence._

_ Harry blinked and blinked again, and finally the obscurity that had overridden his sight started to clear away. He was sitting in the middle of the cave that he'd known he'd been rushing towards, with the charred remnants of a circle around him. It looked as if it had been deeply scored into the stone, although now it was covered with cracks, and Harry thought it resembled a ritual circle more than anything else._

_ Beyond the circle were the charred remnants of bodies._

_ "No," Harry said, but his voice was small in the immensity of the damage the fire had done, and in the whirlwind of power that danced through his body. He stood up and walked out of the circle, a little surprised that each of his steps didn't make the walls and floor shake. That was how enormous with magic he felt._

_ The bodies were body-shaped piles of ash and cinders. When Harry touched them, he burned his fingers and disturbed their shapes. The ash flew up, swirled, and settled. Harry was walking through a tomb, filled with drifting darkness and that sickly-sweet scent of burning flesh. _

_ So much cooked skin and muscle and bone, but not a sign of it. Harry didn't know how hot fire must burn, to vaporize bone, but he thought he could guess. His mind recoiled from guessing, though._

_ There were too many bodies for the Death Eaters they had thought were here. That fact only gradually dawned on Harry, and he turned around and began, painfully, to count the body-shaped piles—one couldn't call them corpses—although it was hard because the wind of his passage tended to shake them loose and mingle one person's flakes with another's._

_ He had burned the Aurors following him to death as well._

_ There was a period of madness after that, of standing still in the middle of the cavern and coming to terms with what he had done while the world reeled around him._

Harry opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling of his rooms in disgust, feeling the reassuring hum of wards around him that told him his magic was still contained. Then he rolled his head over on the pillow and fully gave in to the disgust.

Why did he still dream about this? He knew what had happened—he had interrupted a ritual that was meant to raise one of the Death Eaters to power equal to Voldemort's, rather than a sacrifice or initiation—and he knew what crimes he had committed. It was stupid and useless for his mind to continue tormenting him ten years later. Harry had become a murderer.

And he could become nothing else, when his magic couldn't even manage something as simple as a _Lumos _. He had gone to the Wizengamot and offered them his services because he knew as well as anyone else who wasn't blind that they were the rising power, and at least this way there was the chance that he would become a murderer of murderers rather than innocents.

Harry turned and stared at the firelight, trying to think about something other than the magic thrumming through him as if in response to the wards, traveling back and forth, gnawing, biting, testing the limits of his body. He tried to estimate the number of months he had left in his head, and then snorted. He didn't think it was months, anymore. Maybe weeks. Maybe days. He should choose where he was going to go and die, if he was.

His eyes had started to droop closed in spite of himself when he saw a silvery figure wavering near the ceiling of his room. Harry raised his eyebrows. He hadn't had someone contact him with a Patronus in years. It was perhaps the only means of sending a message that would get past both the wards and the guard that the Wizengamot maintained over his secret. They read all his post before he got it, including messages from Harry's friends and the Weasleys, but then again, that was necessary. Harry knew that there were people out there who _might _have an idea of what had happened to him, and he didn't want to be troubled by their offers of alliance or their claims that they could cure him.

The Patronus came closer, and Harry saw that it was a bird with a heavy beak and a long, snake-like neck. A cormorant, he thought. It settled in front of him and spoke in Malfoy's voice.

"Potter. I want to speak to you about a personal alliance. Now that I'm a member of the Wizengamot, there's no reason we shouldn't." The Patronus paused as if it expected a response, but that didn't fool Harry. He knew that they were meant to carry one simple message. This one was probably imitating the dramatic pauses of Malfoy's voice.

"Speak, Potter," the cormorant said in an irritated voice. "This bird is my way of reaching you, but it does take concentration to get through those words and to listen to you. Don't you have anything to say?"

Harry narrowed his eyes. He started to say that no one could make a Patronus do what Malfoy was doing with it, but then he remembered his sense of Malfoy's heightened power. If he had been through rituals similar to the ones Harry had stumbled into—rituals that worked the way they were _supposed _to—he could do this.

Harry always hated the return of hope. It was like air coming to his lungs when they'd been starved of oxygen, painful and frantic. He had felt it before, and each time, the hope that he could do something about his condition had turned to dust and ashes like—like the bodies of the people he'd killed.

But he swallowed, because at least no one had managed to send a Patronus through the wards before, and responded, "I'll kill one personal enemy for you, no questions asked, if you can help me find a way to get rid of this power."

The cormorant paused, then ducked its neck forwards in a smooth motion and spread its wings. Harry wondered if it was going to depart. Perhaps his offer hadn't been generous enough for Malfoy.

"Two enemies?" he asked.

"You want to get _rid _of it?" the cormorant demanded, with all Malfoy's arrogance and lack of understanding. At least Harry didn't have to doubt that this was someone impersonating Malfoy to try and trick him. "When you're so strong that you make the room shake and my body come to life? Are you mental?"

Harry rolled his eyes. At this point, he didn't care if the cormorant saw him do it or not. _Malfoy _was clearly the one who was mental, and Harry was beginning to regret that he'd made an exception to his refusal to listen to offers. "Yes, of course I am. Because I can do _nothing_—not even light up my own wand—for myself except destroy, and have to have people take care of me like I'm a child, or a Muggle. Because I know that I'm going to die soon with my magic destroying my body in lieu of anything else to eat. Because I want to live a normal life, among normal people, and stop being a weapon." He rolled over on his bed. "You can't understand. Leave."

* * *

Draco, sitting in his drawing room, had to concentrate to keep peering through the cormorant's eyes. It was difficult enough at this distance, when it was only his enhanced power that forced the Patronus to behave unnaturally and act as a permanent conduit for him, but his surprise made it all the harder.

Why hadn't he anticipated this? Of course Potter would want to stop being a weapon—he had seen that far—but it was for a different reason than the one Draco had dreamed of, where Potter would be glad for someone who respected his wishes and treated him like an equal instead of a slave. Instead, Potter's dreams were too small. He couldn't imagine any richer bliss than spending his life reproducing and languishing among the smallest people of the wizarding population, when he might have been among the grandest.

Draco would have withdrawn in disgust, the way that Potter looked poised to, but the memory of what he had felt this afternoon made him pause. He could find other allies, true, but someone with Potter's level of magic didn't come along every day.

"Listen to me, Potter," he said, when he could speak. "Have you ever thought about the fact that you changed fundamentally when you interrupted that ritual?"

Potter jolted as though someone had stabbed him and rolled back over. Draco squinted. The vision of Potter appeared surrounded by a silvery mist the color of the Patronus, and it was hard to be _absolutely _sure, but it did seem as though Potter wore an expression of pure contempt.

"I went from being an Auror to being a murderer," Potter said, his voice charged with enough menace to make Draco's breathing quicken. "But you have the gall to suggest that I wouldn't know that's a change?"

"I didn't mean it that way," Draco murmured, trying to sound repentant when he was quietly delighted. Potter had some spirit left after all. "I meant…you've _changed_, Potter. The old rules no longer apply. You're not a wizard as much as you are—"

"A weapon, I know," Potter said. "Congratulations. You'll soon fit into the Wizengamot, with a mindset like that."

Draco shook his head and knew the cormorant was imitating his gesture, though it cost him more sweat and effort to make it do so. "I was going to say, a ruler. You've been lifted out of the ranks of ordinary people by this ritual. _Elevated._ Instead of thinking about how to get rid of the magic, maybe you should be thinking of how to live with it. I have."

Potter was silent, looking at him. His green eyes were wide, but other than that, Draco could tell nothing. Potter still wore his emotions openly on his face, yes, but Draco didn't think he had as many of them as he used to.

"I hadn't thought of that," Potter said, "because it's not true. I told you, the merest child can perform charms that I can't."

"So think of ways to get around that." Draco made his voice soft. "Think of ways to make your magic work for you although it only destroys. You can get rid of dust by making it vanish, after all. You can alter your clothes by annihilating the parts of them that you don't like. You can change the look of your house by creating new windows through the walls."

Potter snorted and lay back on his bed, crossing his arms behind his neck. "It doesn't work that way, Malfoy. My magic can't be targeted so finely. It's not water that leaks through a dam in controlled bursts, it's a flood, and only that."

Draco could see the limitations now, more clearly than he had from his conversation with Risidell. What he did not see was why Potter should give in to them. He'd never given in to anything else before—though Draco could also see that ten years of service to the Wizengamot and hiding his existence from anyone else might affect his will and hopes.

"There are rituals that could help you learn," he said quietly. "I would be willing to work with you on them."

"There's a ritual I found that could get rid of my magic," Potter said just as quietly, "but it needs two people, one of them near my level in power, to perform it. I would be willing to work with you on that."

"But then you'd become a Muggle," Draco said, who suspected that he knew what ritual Potter was talking about. Yes, it could be done, but he doubted that Potter had thought through all the implications. "There's no way to leave you with any level of magic after that one."

"I don't care," Potter said, and his voice rumbled with a low passion that Draco thought he could have heard through much worse ears than the cormorant's magic-generated ones. "For the chance to walk in sunlight again and live among people, love and hurt and _die _at a normal age instead of when I was thirty? I _don't care_."

Draco spent a moment considering. He would have to go carefully. Potter had somehow, astonishingly, managed to retain a core of Gryffindor values under everything that had happened to him. That core would be opposed to helping Draco rule the wizarding world or transferring his magic to Draco, which had been the next suggestion waiting under Draco's tongue, because Potter would fear what someone else might do with it. That particular fear was probably too strong to overcome.

However, he might persuade Potter slowly and gently towards the first of those goals. Potter wanted to walk in sunlight? That could be arranged. And Draco thought he could also manipulate matters so that Potter would live longer than he thought he would.

And if Potter wanted someone who treated him normally, someone who could give him passion and defiance and challenge…

Draco didn't know if he could manage love. But for someone like Potter, the closest thing to an equal he would ever find, he might try.

"How about this?" he asked. "You help me with rituals that will increase _my _power. There are also some I've found that need two people to perform them, and the stronger the better. In return, we work on your ritual. It's going to need a lot of preparation before you're ready, you know. Otherwise, it might simply kill you."

Potter let his eyes fall shut. "If I don't die before then," he whispered, "you have my agreement, Malfoy. Anything else you want from me, I can give."

"I don't think you'll die," Draco said. It was as close as he could come to saying what he believed: that Potter's magic was responsive to his state of mind. It was destroying him because he didn't want to live this way, plain and simple. Give him a chance to live another way, and the magic would probably back off. Draco refused to believe that it was utterly impossible to control. Nothing was.

"Thank you," Potter whispered. "Anything."

_And I will ask for everything, before the end, _Draco thought.


	3. Assault

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Assault_

"Mr. Malfoy, can I speak with you for a moment?"

Draco turned around, careful to keep a smile on his face. It wasn't everyone who could have done that, he knew. They had just sat through a long Wizengamot session involving three trials and the discussion of two new laws. Draco had listened to everyone involved, made his judgments, and spoken his piece when required to do so. It would seem presumptuous if the newest and youngest member spoke too much, he knew. Besides, he still needed a feeling for the rhythm of the Wizengamot and the way they made decisions. He didn't want to brand himself a maverick at the beginning. He wanted to slowly accumulate power.

And he'd kept the possibility of doing so through Potter strictly in the back of his mind. It would only be a distraction from the job that, as far as anyone on the Wizengamot knew, was the highest pinnacle he could aspire to.

"Of course, Madam Gilfleur," he murmured, and drew her over to a corner of the room diagonal to where the others congregated. This was the retreat room, filled with tables of drinks and food, where the Wizengamot could go between or after sessions to refresh themselves. Draco thought that only a fool would touch the alcohol in this kind of atmosphere, but then again, the Wizengamot was supposed to represent the British wizarding world. It wouldn't be complete without the contingent of fools, Draco thought tolerantly. "What was it that you wanted to say?"

"I have been watching your face this morning." Gilfleur took a sip of her water for a moment before she went on. Draco watched Kellerston, the member who didn't like him, shoot him a single hostile glance before turning to converse with a woman who had short dark hair and an intense face. Draco didn't know who she was yet, and couldn't ask so openly, but remembering her features was a good start. "I have been impressed by the intelligence and wisdom you have shown so far."

Draco took his time turning around. He wasn't threatened by Madam Gilfleur, if that was what she wanted him to feel. He knew that his control of his expression had been perfect. "So soon?" he murmured. "But I have said little."

Gilfleur smiled and left it up to him to deduce how and by what mysterious methods she'd got her knowledge. "Intelligence and wisdom can come as easily through pauses and silence as through words."

Draco only nodded to confirm his agreement and then waited politely for her to get to the point.

Gilfleur sighed and laid her hand on his arm. "You need not be so wary," she said softly. "I am on your side. Unlike certain others."

Draco didn't let his eyes dart around the room. He knew he had enemies here. The point hadn't been to come into the Wizengamot with no enemies, but to know who they were and how to combat them. "What do you need an intelligent and wise—and new—Wizengamot member for, Madam Gilfleur?"

She watched him with a smile, then murmured, "This is more evidence of the qualities I require. How closely were you following the debate over the robes law?"

_Quite closely, _Draco could have said. He thought the law that would require a certain style of robes, and _only_ those robes, for certain Ministry jobs was doomed to failure. Most of the Ministry workers already wore their regulation robes most of the time; certainly the Aurors did, and the other offices didn't need the public to identify them as clearly or quickly.

But Gilfleur seemed to be looking for a specific statement, and Draco didn't know that this one would fit her agenda. So he nodded and said, "I confess that the purpose of the law bewilders me, and its language is labyrinthine."

"Labyrinthine," Gilfleur said, giving him a grateful smile. "The adjective I was looking for without knowing it. Yes, I think all of us would benefit from simpler language in the law, don't you?"

_Either she has someone she wants to do a favor for with this simpler language, or she wants to disoblige whatever Wizengamot member introduced the law in the first place, _Draco thought, while he kept an innocent face. "Perhaps we would, Madam."

"I will count on you to suggest a few alternatives," Gilfleur said, and squeezed his arm. The gentle, warm pressure of her fingers had certainly made men do what she wanted before now, Draco thought, allowing himself to take one breath of her perfume. "Perhaps you could owl them to me in the next day?"

Draco bowed without committing himself one way or the other. He would have to find out who had proposed the law and make sure that it was someone he wouldn't mind crossing, in case it turned out Gilfleur wanted to use him as a pawn in her private feud.

"Excellent," Gilfleur said, smiling as if he had given her a promise, and then swirled away into the crowd. Draco leaned against the wall and watched her go thoughtfully. Most of the other Wizengamot members smiled and nodded to her, he noticed, but she stopped and spoke to none of them. That might indicate she considered herself above them.

Or it might simply indicate that most of them were on good terms with her, but knew better than to get involved in her crusades.

Draco smiled. He could feel the possibilities clicking and shifting in his mind, and he enjoyed the intricate dance for its own sake. The most petty maneuver could turn out to have connections to higher affairs, or consequences that would ensnare one in a web of enemies and promises.

He would have to work on this problem and solve it in such a way that he not only climbed out of the thorny nest but ended up on top.

Of course, that would have to wait for later in the evening. He had an appointment to meet Potter at the end of the afternoon.

* * *

Harry shifted and looked carefully around him, then grimaced and tried to wrap his magic more tightly around him. It wasn't impossible that wards on the Wizengamot headquarters could detect his magic from this far away. He wouldn't be able to use it, either, because he _knew _there were wards that would detect that. And using it was often the only way to ease the way that it built up, gnawing on his bones, eating them, reducing them to powder slowly—

Harry shut his eyes and refused the self-pity that he could feel creeping up on him. It wasn't as if this was a new emotion, when his body had suffered the destruction of the magic for the last ten years.

_Yes, but I'm closer to the end now._

_Yes, but this is also the point at which I may have the most hope, if Malfoy can actually deliver the miracles that he hints he can._

Harry paced back and forth in the flat, barren meadow that he had invited Malfoy to. It was the place where he had killed a man who was trying to become the next Voldemort a few years ago, and no wizards or Muggles lived nearby. There was a desolate feeling to the site, though Harry knew for certain he had only targeted the man and not any animals or other people who might have been around. There was _always _the same desolate feeling to places where he used his magic, as if the earth and sky resented the fact that he had annihilated one of their children.

He'd tried to resist those feelings at first, but they would keep coming back and he couldn't get rid of them. He had decided, in the end, that he was going mad enough without having to test his every thought, and had allowed his mind to keep its delusions.

A sharp crack had him spinning around, but it was only Malfoy Apparating in. Harry nodded back to him and walked forwards, studying him more closely than he had when Risidell brought Malfoy by to introduce him. After all, then he had only been another of Harry's masters. Now he was…

Harry had no idea, and once again, he refused to put up with hope until it had shown itself to have a solid basis.

Malfoy had changed out of the Wizengamot costume and wore simple, dark grey robes. Harry wondered for a moment if the color was meant to reflect his moral allegiance, and then snorted to himself. He would be highly surprised if Malfoy _had _a moral allegiance.

"Potter." Malfoy nodded to him and then turned and studied the edges of the field as if he were looking for traces of magic. "Your work?"

Harry curled his lip. Malfoy could sound less condescending about that, he decided. It wasn't as though Harry had lied about the nature of his magic or what the Wizengamot kept him for. "Yes," he said. "A rising Dark Lord." He drew out the book that he carried from his pocket. It was the one luxury the Wizengamot let him have a lot of, books, since they knew that he couldn't perform most of the spells in them. "I've located the ritual that I want to use to reduce my power."

Malfoy turned swiftly back to him, and for some reason, there was a pleased expression on his face. "Reduce? Not get rid of?"

"I misspoke," Harry said, cursing himself. He would have to be careful of his every word around Malfoy, the same way he was around every other Wizengamot member, if for different reasons. "I do mean get rid of." He let the book fall open to the page he had stared at for months and years, trying to dream himself into a reality where he would have a partner who could help him perform this. "Now. What I don't really know is what the names of some of these components mean. I hoped you could help me."

"Admitting incapacity, Potter?" Malfoy stepped up behind him. Harry's chest clenched painfully, but that was paranoia, due to the fact that most of the people he met outside the Wizengamot's headquarters were trying to kill him. He blew out some of the compressed breath through sheer determination and then traced a finger down the lines of the ritual until he reached the first mysterious reference.

"Yes, for everything except reducing people and artifacts to their primary elements. What's hyssop? The author doesn't explain, but seems to assume that anyone performing the ritual would already know."

"Let me see."

Malfoy took the book from him, and Harry reluctantly let it go. If the Wizengamot knew what he wanted to do with this ritual, he would never get it back. They desired to use him and his magic until the last moments, when they would trust in their wards to protect them from his death throes.

Harry himself didn't trust the wards, which was why he wanted to go away to an abandoned patch of country. But that was assuming he would know he was dying in time to act. If he didn't, then he would probably just die in his locked room and bring the Wizengamot headquarters down with him, and no one would know the truth of what had happened.

A surge of intense loneliness swept across him, and he swallowed. He would have given anything at the moment to see Ron or Hermione again. They had been only words on paper to him for so long.

"I think I know."

Harry had to pull his mind back from a long distance to focus on what Malfoy was saying, and then he had to try harder to turn around and look interested. "Do you?" he asked. "What is it, then?"

Malfoy looked up at him from the book, and Harry twitched a bit. Malfoy's eyes were so intense, as if he had looked into Harry's soul and seen the shades of light and darkness there, as well as counted them. He reached out a hand, and Harry stared at it for what felt like a long, dreamy moment before realizing what Malfoy wanted and taking the book from him.

Malfoy tightened his lips, as if that wasn't what he wanted after all, but said primly, "Hyssop is a type of mint, strong-smelling, and used in a lot of basic potions and dishes. But you were right to be cautious. There are several different kinds, and we'll have to look at the correspondences between various components in the ritual to discover the right kind to use."

Harry stared at him. Malfoy twisted his head to the side and asked, "What is it?"

Harry shook his head. If he told Malfoy that this was the first time someone had told him he was right in years—in person, that is, rather than agreeing with one of the lies in his "Australian" letters—then Malfoy would simply think he was pathetic to be so stunned by it. "I didn't know it would take that long," he admitted. "Or I knew, but hoped it wouldn't. I want this magic out of my body."

Malfoy made a complicated noise deep in his throat, and then asked, "Can I see a demonstration?"

Harry laid the book aside. "Of my magic?" he asked indifferently. He should have known Malfoy would want this. Most of the new Wizengamot members did when first learning about him, and they would be eager until they saw it happen. Then they would be horrified and edge away from him. None of them ever watched the executions or exterminations that he performed on their behalf. _I might as well take Malfoy through the same initiation as all the others. I only hope that he won't be horrified enough to abandon me in turn._

Malfoy nodded. His eyes were enormous and had an odd, liquid sheen to them, as if he were about to cry. Harry paused, curious, then decided that was none of his business. They were allies, not friends.

He looked around the field, searching for a target. His magic began to race inside him like a second heartbeat at the prospect of being used, and he gasped. "Raise the strongest wards you know," he whispered urgently. "Otherwise, the Wizengamot will sense that I'm using my magic outside their quarters without permission, and that could be hard to explain."

"I can feel your power," Malfoy said in a dazed fashion. Harry hoped he wasn't one of those rare people who simply fainted in the presence of overwhelming amounts of magic. "Why don't you raise the wards yourself?"

"I told you," Harry said, already reconsidering Malfoy's potential as an ally if he couldn't keep something simple like this in his head. "I can't do anything except destroy. That includes raising wards. They're a creative effort. I can destroy them again once I'm done, if you want, but not make them."

He had to speak against the tightness in his throat and groin, the coil of poisoned magic like honey in his blood. And he had to pick a target soon. He, Malfoy, and the book were all essential, so Harry focused on the slight hill that the ground formed not far away. The magic changed direction and surrounded his vision with tangles and hooks of black and red, and Harry clenched his fists. The power would come out soon whether he wanted it to or not.

* * *

Draco had heard Potter say that. Of course he had. But he hadn't absorbed the full implications until now.

_He could be defenseless to stop his enemies from imprisoning him if he ever hesitated about destroying them. _

Of course, he could destroy the wards to get free again, but he could do _nothing _else. Draco was beginning to appreciate how this could be a more serious limitation than he had thought it would be, even though his mouth was still dry and his cock swollen with the approaching storm of Potter's power.

He raised the wards, and added another layer on top of that, and then tapped into his enhanced power. The wards grew and entwined with one another like the canopy of a forest. Draco smiled. No one in the Wizengamot, strong wizard or not, was going to feel Potter through _that_. Draco knew he was stronger than any of them, and that, combined with his cleverness, made it impossible for anyone to combat him with spells that he thoroughly knew and understood.

Draco turned back just as Potter lifted one hand towards the small hill he had Apparated in front of.

The hill tore itself apart as though something had exploded inside it. The dirt rose into the air, and became smaller and smaller, diminishing to flecks and then to nothing. The roaring _boom _of the explosion became nothing but tiny waves of sound, almost visibly becoming less as Draco watched; even the echoes devoured themselves. The grass was gone, vanishing in midflight. The earth lay flat where the hill had been, and if someone had asked Draco whether it was naturally so or whether it had once risen, he would have said that of course it was naturally so. The hill had ceased to exist.

That was what happened in the world around Draco, visibly.

The clash of magic was deafening, the pressure in his ears strong enough to send Draco to his knees. His wards wavered, nearly caught in the backblast, but Potter had enough control over his magic to ensure that he destroyed only what he intended to destroy. Draco found himself gasping, overcome by fear—

And desire.

His magic leaped up to welcome Potter's. His veins became super-charged with lightning. Draco laughed aloud, and, as Potter turned a stunned face towards him, staggered up and then bent at the waist again. It was hard to walk beneath the combined weight of the magic hanging in the clouds and his own painful erection.

Potter came slowly towards him, his face so furrowed that he looked much older than he was. Then again, Draco thought, gazing up at him, there were flecks of white at his temples, looking as though he had been caught in a snowfall. Perhaps the magic was simply aging his body in the way he had claimed it was. "Are you all right, Malfoy?"

Draco reached out and laid his hands on Potter's arms. That meant he was touching cloth instead of skin, since Potter wore a shirt with long sleeves, but it didn't matter. Draco could still feel the power beaming up at him as if he stood holding the sun. He closed his eyes and murmured, "Stay still for a minute. That's all I ask."

Potter stood still for what felt like a timeless time to Draco, but was probably shorter than that. Draco floated, calm and drunk, in the maze of Potter's power, a golden place with reflecting walls that threw back the possibility of what the two of them, together, could become over and over again. Draco shivered and sighed and then stepped away and opened his eyes to smile at Potter.

"That was wonderful," he said.

Potter's eyebrows were raised. "Perhaps you mean that it made you wonder at it?" he asked. "Because you can't mean it in the sense that I think you do."

"I mean in the sense that it was beautiful," Draco said. "And it got me hard."

Potter's face flooded with so much red he might have been a virgin, though Draco, having heard the rumors before he "went to Australia," was fairly sure that wasn't the case. Then he made a vague gesture and said, "I'd heard of people like that, who are drawn to magic, but I've never met one."

"Most people are less drawn than I am," Draco agreed calmly. "Because most people are less honest." He reached out impulsively, since Potter regarded him with such intense doubt that Draco didn't know how else he could convince him. "Here. Hold on to my arms while I push my power towards the surface."

"It's not the same," Potter said warily, though he did reach out at the same time and grip Draco's arms where directed. "Your power is controlled, and you can do whatever you want with it. Not like I can." A pang of envy shot through his voice.

"Would you like to be able to control yours?" Draco whispered, his eyelashes lowered as he concentrated and released the spell that kept most people from sensing how powerful he was. That kind of magic was beyond most wizards' sensory perceptions anyway, but Draco didn't believe in taking chances. Someone else who had been through the rituals might not be a potential ally in the way Potter was. "You could, instead of getting rid of it. Of course we can do this ritual if you want, but I would say that we should also look into ways of letting you retain it and control it at the same time."

He raised his eyes to Potter's, awaiting the answer to his question, at the same moment as his magic rose like the sun.

* * *

Harry shut his eyes. He wasn't trembling because of Malfoy's strength; if he wanted to do that, he could do it by looking in a mirror.

But he couldn't have imitated the perilous warmth welling under his hands, a purring wild beast that was only under the control of its trainer. Harry shuddered and kept on shuddering. He wanted to be in contact with this magic more than he had ever wanted to be in contact with his own. He knew what his own felt like, and he was tired of the endless destruction with nothing behind the passion.

Malfoy's magic had plenty of passion behind it. And desire, and ambition, and a pulsing _life _that Harry envied more than anything else, because his magic was the embodied force of death. Malfoy had plans, and Harry could sense that without knowing what they were. He was going to change the world and himself.

Change them, not destroy them.

Harry stepped closer, and closer. He kept his eyes shut, because seeing the expression on Malfoy's face would destroy the illusion. He wanted to pretend, for a few moments more, that this was a simple bathing in the sea of another's power, that there were no bonds or obligations constraining them.

"That's it," Malfoy said, and the whistle of his breath traveled across Harry's hair and his voice shook.

Harry couldn't help it. He opened his eyes to see if Malfoy was possibly experiencing the same kind of thing he was.

Malfoy's eyes were wide and dark and blown. His hands rested on Harry's shoulder and behind his head; the warmth of his magic had so consumed Harry that he hadn't even felt the hands come to rest. Malfoy moved nearer, and the magic came with him, a blast of controlled fire that flickered around the edges of Harry's senses, touch and stroke and caress, and then fell back.

Harry was gasping. It was as difficult to breathe at the moment as it really would have been in superheated air, he thought, his heart pounding and lifting. He couldn't—he couldn't do this. He couldn't stand here like this and not be consumed.

But moment after moment passed, and he was not consumed.

"Can you still give this up?" Malfoy asked, from so close that Harry felt the movement of his lips when he spoke. "Can you say that magic isn't its own reason for existing?"

"If I could have magic like yours," Harry whispered back, "I might believe it."

"You shall have it," Malfoy said. "I promise."

And Harry, standing close in the firestorm of his power, believed it.


	4. Counterstrike

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four—Counterstrike_

"Here you are, Madam Gilfleur."

She had the ungraciousness to look surprised when Draco handed her the list of ways they could change the wording of the law about Ministry robes. She stared at it, stared at him, and then folded it up and tucked it in her robe pocket with a little shake of her head.

"I must admit, I didn't expect you to fulfill this commission so quickly," she murmured.

Draco enjoyed giving her an innocent expression in reaction to her probing gaze, as if he had no idea why she would be surprised. "You did say that you wanted it in the day. This is still the same twenty-four-hour period."

"Yes, of course," she said, and looked at him some more.

Draco turned around with a lift of one eyebrow to pick up the small sandwiches that the Wizengamot seemed constrained to serve in the morning. It was good enough, Draco supposed, light bread and light cheese and a light sort of sauce working together to create a medley of flavors, but he would have preferred something more substantial.

The blow that hit his elbow a moment later and sent the plate flying out of his hands was substantial. Draco watched the plate fly, felt the tingling from his elbow, and then turned around and smiled at the Wizengamot member who had seen fit to interrupt him.

"Jasper Kellerston, I believe. Allow me to express my condolences on the loss of your family."

Draco saw Madam Gilfleur shake her head from the corner of his eye, but he didn't see why he should pay attention. This Kellerston wasn't being subtle; he wasn't paying Draco the compliment of assuming that he could be opposed by someone intelligent. Draco wasn't interested in playing up to Kellerston's fantasies that Draco was afraid of him. No one with the name of Malfoy should be, because he wasn't frightening.

Kellerston went still, gaze on his face. "How much do you know about your father's activities during the war?" he demanded.

"More than I'd like," Draco admitted, with a delicate shudder. "I had to sit in the front row and watch as he let the Dark Lord take his wand from him, as he was left out of the activities planned between the Death Eaters because he had no wand, and as he had to beg favors from others because he could no longer perform the simplest spells."

"Lying," Kellerston whispered.

"What? Oh, yes, he did a lot of that too," Draco said, and set about picking out another sandwich, ignoring the way Kellerston fumed at his side. He was the one who had started this. He shouldn't have done that without knowing what Draco was like as an opponent, which was infuriating.

"I don't mean that," Kellerston snapped. "I mean that you're lying. You must have known about your father's complicity in the raid!"

Draco watched him for a moment more, trying to estimate the level of intelligence in his eyes and face. He could not be _completely _stupid if he had secured a seat on the Wizengamot, especially the Wizengamot as it had become in the last ten years, and that must mean that he had hidden resources.

But then Draco saw the sourness, the bitterness, and the desperation in the look Kellerston cast him, and understood. It didn't matter how intelligent Kellerston had once been, how political or diplomatic. Now, he only cared for the cause he had dedicated himself to. Draco half-shook his head. Fanaticism had consumed more fine minds than anything else on the planet. The Dark Lord would have been far more tolerable and a far more brilliant conqueror if he hadn't let Mudbloods and Potter obsess him. Draco's father would have been as cunning as he'd thought himself if he had made contingency plans in case the Dark Lord lost, rather than staking everything on one throw of the die.

And Kellerston had lost everything else to revenge. It was one of the reasons that Draco had made himself outgrow revenge when he started aiming at real power. He couldn't afford to turn down empty paths that didn't lead him where he wanted to go.

"I'm afraid I can't help you," Draco said, still lightly. "I know nothing about such a raid. If my father participated in it, he never told me of it, and he was never tried for it. What evidence do you have?" This sandwich had pickles on it. Draco made a mental note to figure out who had made it and compliment them. The Wizengamot couldn't be much in the way of offering compliments, given the blandness of so much of the food.

"He was a Death Eater," Kellerston said.

Draco waited, then said, "And so were many other people. And yet, they couldn't all have been involved in the raid on your family."

"They could have been," Kellerston said, and his eyes flashed with passion. "They hated my family. Voldemort had a grudge against us."

Draco gave him a point for bravery; there were plenty of people who wouldn't say that name even now. Draco could if he must, but he preferred the name Dark Lord because it wouldn't make people flinch as much, and it was useful for confusing the cretins about how much he believed of the former conqueror's agenda.

"Voldemort never sent his whole army anywhere at any time," Draco said. "He had too many things that he wanted them to accomplish, and he knew better than that. If the Aurors had been properly organized during that period, they could have decimated a crowd of Death Eaters with one well-placed raid."

"So you admit that you know how Voldemort's mind worked." Kellerston leaned even closer, and a breath rich and warm with scents gusted over Draco's face. Draco frowned. It seemed that he had a rival for the sandwiches with pickles.

"Of course," he said. "I've already admitted that I was right there to watch my father, and I was Voldemort's personal torturer for a time, because he thought it was the best use he could put me to. I had no stomach for killing, you see." He wiped his fingers on the nearby napkin and reached for another plate.

Kellerston seized his arm in a grip hard enough to be annoying. "Then you must know about the grudge he had against my family."

"I can't remember him ever mentioning it," Draco said, and watched the place where the fingers were denting his skin. He began to count seconds in his head. Yes, he no longer took revenge, but that didn't mean he would not get his own back for insults like this. The difference was that he no longer pursued grudges across years, and he no longer required his victims to know that _he _was the one who had hurt them.

"You _have _to," Kellerston said. "Death Eater."

Draco sighed. This was getting tiresome. The Wizengamot had its complement of fools, as he had noted to himself yesterday, and there were some who could be stirred up by hearing a repetition of that old name, which they would not be if they were simply left to ignore his past and welcome him among themselves.

"If you say so," he murmured in a bored voice, while he caught Kellerston's eyes and held them, and whispered to the magic beneath the surface of his skin.

Ordinarily, powerful as he was, he would still have needed a wand to cast this curse, but because Kellerston was holding him and had been for more than a minute now, that connection would carry the weight of Draco's magic. He reached out questing fingers and ran them lightly over Kellerston's inner organs, playing them like a pianist searching for the right keys, checking to see if the instrument was in tune.

There was a defect, yes, and it was in the walls of the heart. Draco used one of the tendrils of his magic to poke lightly at it and accelerate the damage. Then he pulled his power back, all the while keeping a bland smile on his face.

Kellerston's heart would not fail tomorrow, or probably even in the next year. But it would fail faster than it would have otherwise. Draco had taken away an unknown portion of his life, hurt him in ways that would ultimately punish him far more than a simple reply to an insult or a stripping of his status would, and by such a method that Draco's own interference was undetectable.

"If you say so," he repeated more loudly, when Kellerston showed no sign of letting go of him. "But you will have to speak more words than that soon, because the meeting is about to begin." And he stepped away from Kellerston, letting everyone see how tight his grip remained, how punishing, on someone who had never offered him a moment's danger.

Kellerston still took an instant to respond when he realized what Draco was doing. He seemed content to stare at him with burning eyes and clench his fingers down further, squeezing and pulling as though he wanted to yank the skin away from Draco's muscles and bones. Then he tore his hand free with an equally ungraceful gesture and stalked away.

Draco smiled after him. Some of the stares turned to _him_ for that, and Draco knew they were wondering if he was simple. Well, the fools would be, and there might be more of them in the Wizengamot than he had originally counted on. The more intelligent ones would be wondering what revenge he had come up with.

Gilfleur was at his side a moment later, lowering her voice to a hiss. "Do you know what you're doing?"

"Yes, in fact," Draco said, and changed his smile a shade or two for her. She might like the reassurance. "I see no reason to let Kellerston's grudge continue unacknowledged when you were the one who told me about him in the first few minutes after I was initiated."

Gilfleur gave him a thoughtful glance. "So you prefer to acknowledge reality?"

"Yes," Draco said. "If only because it makes it more difficult to change it to my own ends if I'm ignoring it."

Gilfleur laughed a little at that, and Draco changed his smile again, so that it would be wry. He had honestly warned her. If she didn't want to think about how Draco might be hunting for the power to change reality, that was up to her.

* * *

Harry slept that night and woke in a fever that burned away all the stupid nightmares about what kind of life he'd had in the last ten years, or the ritual that had caused that life. He paced around his room, ignoring the tray of food that the house-elves employed by the Wizengamot had brought, ignoring the fact that the fire was smoldering. He could build that up by hand. Or he could let it run out and then light a scrap of wood on fire to give him light if he wanted.

If he wanted.

Now that he'd met Malfoy, now that he'd felt what Malfoy could do, it seemed as though someone had led him out from a cage where he'd been trapped and given him the keys so that he could never be caught again. He'd spent so long thinking of his power as a constraint, and when he envisioned things being different, it was thinking of himself without magic or thinking of himself as somehow back to his normal level of power. What else was possible?

Now he wondered what would have happened if he'd been the proper subject of the ritual, or managed to enter at such a moment that it worked as it was supposed to. What if he had become that powerful? What if he could match Malfoy in level of both strength and control?

The fantasies were wild and new, and dashed through his head like sweet wine, making it spin. Harry had to sit down on his bed and bow his head into his hands so that he wouldn't fall.

They weren't fantasies he'd ever had before. Why would he? Besides the undeniable nature of his magic—and he had done everything he could at first to deny it, conducting test after test in a frantic attempt to find _something _creative his magic could do—there was the fact that he didn't want power over others. He had accepted the job with the Wizengamot in desperation because at least that way, he was still living out part of the dream that he had entertained when he became an Auror. He was still helping.

What if he didn't help?

It had never been an option. That was why the fantasies. That was why the fever, and the dizzying feeling that he was both free of a cage and standing at the edge of a precipice. What if he _changed _and became something else?

For years, he had assumed that the ritual had worked in him such profound changes that he would never alter again before his death. And with the magic set to kill him so soon, that wasn't the stupid, melodramatic statement that it would have been in most other contexts.

Harry tossed back his head and laughed. Yesterday, he wouldn't have been able even to think that any of his thoughts were stupid and melodramatic. He would have thought of them as Very Serious Thoughts and been shocked at anyone, like Malfoy, who might have suggested otherwise.

But now…

Now it was changing, and Harry didn't know that he wanted to go as far in the change as Malfoy apparently had—caring only about power, attaining a level of control over that power which meant he was as dangerous as a polished knife—but it offered him options.

There was never any doubt that he would accept Malfoy's offer. Really, he already had. They would work together. Harry had access to the rituals that Malfoy needed and probably more that he'd never heard of. As always, the Wizengamot had showered him with all the books he'd asked for, secure in the knowledge that he could never use the magic for any of the spells in them, simple or complex.

Now he just had to wait for Malfoy to contact him again—

Harry paused and cocked his head to the side. Why _did _he have to wait for that?

If he could work out a way around the destructive nature of his magic, he could be the one to contact Malfoy. It would be exciting, fun, new, an adventure, since so far he had lain back and given up before the inevitability of it all. Or he could find some way that would let him communicate the message even if his magic wouldn't allow it. He couldn't cast a Patronus now, but there were other methods.

He turned around and began to study the stone wall above the nearest fireplace. The light was too dim, though, and in irritation, he walked over and knelt beside it, beginning to build the fire up. The skills he had learned like this might not be useless, he thought then. Perhaps he could help Malfoy gather ingredients, at least, or prepare the practical aspects of the ritual that Malfoy might not want to trust anyone else with.

His door swung open.

Harry finished building up the fire, ignoring the sudden flinch that ran down his shoulders. He had a perfect right to do this. Why not? It wasn't unusual for him to be kneeling here doing this when someone from the Wizengamot came in.

But he clenched his fists anyway as he stood up and turned around to face the Wizengamot member behind him, because now he had a secret to protect, one that he knew they wouldn't approve of. Weapons weren't supposed to have wills of their own.

Melisande Gilfleur stood behind him, studying him with narrowed eyes. Harry blinked back at her. She wasn't one of the ones who usually came to him. When the Wizengamot made decisions as a whole, they sent Risidell or one of the younger members who wasn't as intimidated by him. And he didn't think he had ever killed a personal enemy for her. There had been the first visit from her when she was initiated, the inevitable demand for a demonstration of his power, and then one or two times when she had accompanied someone else and stood there stiffly, arms folded into her sleeves, staring at him. Harry had once thought that she had to fight to preserve the impression of him as a mindless weapon in her perceptions, rather than someone she was frightened of.

_Well, in that she shows good sense, _Harry thought, and let his power rise shimmering to the surface of his skin, the way Malfoy had done yesterday, as he stared at her. "Yes, madam?" he asked at last, when it seemed that it would be up to him to make the first move, because she was never going to say anything.

"I wish to give you a warning," Gilfleur said.

Harry stared despite himself. Had she found out what he plotted with Malfoy already?

His magic stirred as he began to think of killing her. Harry swallowed through a dry throat and held it down, though that meant that flaring pain ran through the bones of his back a moment later. He didn't want to simply do that. He never wanted killing to be the first thing he thought of, both because of his old lingering thoughts about helping people and because—well, Malfoy was promising him something more diverse. Harry ought to get used to thinking of that as it were real.

"What's the warning?" he asked.

Gilfleur walked forwards and stopped only when, Harry thought, she physically couldn't force herself any closer. Her eyes were intense. "There is a new member of the Wizengamot whom you may have to kill soon," she said.

Harry stood up a bit. Malfoy was the only new member of the Wizengamot initiated in the past three months. But he might still be leaping to conclusions. Gilfleur had been a member for years and so might consider anyone "new" who had less seniority than she did.

"Yes?" he asked. "Which one? And why?"

"Draco Malfoy." Gilfleur's hand played with the edge of her shawl. "I had thought that he was a safe prospect," she said softly, as if to herself. "Why would he not be? He had worked to achieve this seat, and Risidell trusted him, and his past meant that he would be easy enough to control if he began to get too independent. But it seems that he does not consider himself bound by the laws that constrain others."

Harry let his clenched fists relax. She still considered him enough of a weapon to speak freely in front of him, because she did not imagine that he could have an interest or intervene in any way in the internal politics of the Wizengamot. Harry was just a tool, after all, who fit the hand that picked it up and did what it was told.

_To be fair, _Harry told himself after a moment's consideration, _I don't know that I would have thought of myself any other way, before yesterday. I didn't dream of intervening in their quarrels because I didn't care._

And the most valuable thing he could do now was to preserve their impression of him as being that way. If he showed that he was interested, that he was powerful, he would learn less. He made himself look indifferently at her. "Am I to execute him today?" he asked in a bored tone.

Gilfleur, startled from her musings, blinked at him. "No. Of course not."

Harry nodded. "Then go away. I'd like to finish this book I was reading." He flopped down into his usual chair in front of the fire and picked up a book at random. It was one about rituals, so it might provide him some useful information, but it had seemed as far a chance as all the others yesterday. He buried his nose in it.

Gilfleur drew in a breath that might have been irritation or outrage, but in the end, she seemed to remind herself that it was useless to confront someone who was that indifferent and bustled away. Harry didn't put down the book until long after he heard the wards lock into place. He could think as well while staring blankly at a printed page, and they might be watching him now that Gilfleur had come in by herself.

So. They would want him to kill Malfoy. Harry didn't know what Malfoy had done yet, but he felt a mild annoyance that it was apparently something that made the others wary and suspicious enough to decide that he ought to be got rid of. Harry was a novice to the games of intrigue, at first because he had refused to play them when he was an Auror and then because he had no need to, and he had still done better than Malfoy.

But Harry was still going to protect him, because that was the same as protecting his secret and his chance of freedom.

He gave up on the idea of using his magic to carve letters out of the stone above the fireplace, as he'd been half-planning. They would be watching him now, yes, and they would notice any sort of use of magic. He waited, instead, until the house-elf that regularly brought his meals appeared, and then stood and walked over to it as it was setting the tray of sandwiches on his table.

The house-elf immediately turned to him, eyes big and wet and ears trembling. The elves feared him more than the people did. Harry thought that was because more of them had the ability to sense his magic.

Yesterday, that would have made him feel awful and like he should crouch and make himself smaller. Today, it made him smile. There were other possibilities. He _could _act in a way that would cause people to fear him, and he might not have to feel bad about that.

Maybe. He hadn't yet decided when it came to that.

"I want you to carry a message for me," he said, deciding to make it a command so that the house-elf couldn't slip around the edges of the order with any excuse or pleading that it only served the Wizengamot. If he acted as though he were the master, he doubted that the elf would resist.

Sure enough, it didn't, bowing and whimpering something about, "Yes, Master Potter."

Harry stared down at it, feeling as though something had woken from a long sleep in his head and stomach and stretched rippling dark wings. He didn't know what to name it, but he knew he liked the feel of it.

Licking his lips and deciding that he wouldn't think right now about whether it was the elf's submission or the name of "Master" or something else that had pleased him, Harry said, "I want you to carry a message to the house-elf who serves the new Wizengamot member, Draco Malfoy. You're not to tell anyone else the message. Otherwise—" He lifted his hand and gathered the magic behind his palm. A yearning feeling spiraled through him, drawing his veins taut. The magic longed to be used.

The elf nearly fainted, and then tugged its ears hard enough to topple it from its feet anyway. "I is sorry, Master Potter, I is sorry," it whispered. "Yes, please, let me live."

Harry pulled his magic back, which made his skin tighten and ache, but he could ignore that easily as he said, "Tell him that Madam Gilfleur came to me and warned me that he was getting too independent and I might need to kill him. Can you say that?"

The house-elf's mouth fell open, but it bobbed its head again, murmured, "Yes, yes, sorry," and then vanished.

Harry went back to his chair and thought for a moment. How did he feel about that, wielding his power as a club to make someone else obey his will—a magical creature of the kind that, he knew from her letters, Hermione was still working to free?

He didn't know yet.


	5. Backblow

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five—Backblow_

Draco was leaning against the back of his bathtub, his eyes closed in luxury, when the house-elf appeared. Draco did nothing except open one eye. He was generally unembarrassed around house-elves, especially since they had seen him in circumstances far more naked than the current layer of bubbles and thick, foamy water that lay over his loins. He could always order this one to punish itself later if he thought it needed the discipline.

The elf that stood beside the tub was not one of his, however, and Draco regarded it with a bit more interest. It was bobbing its head, blinking so fast that it squeezed tears from its eyes, and gripping the scrap of cloth that it wore around its waist in lieu of clothes. Draco was glad that whoever owned it had at least managed that much decency. It was one thing for house-elves to see him naked and quite another for it to happen the other way around.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I has a message from Master Harry Potter, Master Draco Malfoy, sir," moaned the elf in an ecstasy of agony.

Draco lowered his head, afraid that the pleased look in his eyes would be _too _visible to the house-elf. He knew at once what Potter had done, and that meant he knew the elf could possibly still report what happened around it to other members of the Wizengamot. There was no saying that Potter had managed to secure its loyalty before it left him, no matter how he had convinced it to deliver the message in the first place.

"What is the message?" he asked. Best to let a house-elf that upset get done with its task as soon as possible.

"I is supposed to tell you that M-Mistress Madam Gilfleur came to M-Master Harry Potter and said that you are getting t-too independent and might need to be k-killed. By M-Master Harry Potter," the elf added.

Draco threw back his head and laughed. The elf cowered from the echoes off the walls of the bathroom. Draco didn't let that bother him, but had his laugh, and then smiled at the elf. "You've done well," he said. "Go back to your master and tell him that I've received his message and thank him for the warning. He will hear somewhat from me tomorrow concerning the task we've been working on."

The elf, looking reassured at someone who knew how to treat it, bowed and disappeared. Draco leaned back and closed his eyes, chuckling. The water around him seemed warmer, though he knew that came from his own satisfaction rather than any renewed magic.

Well, _well_, well.

This was an excellent sign for several reasons. First, Draco now knew that Madam Gilfleur's friendliness was indeed a ruse, though he wasn't yet sure of her ultimate target. Second, Potter cared enough about Draco—or, be honest, the promise of freedom and power that Draco offered—to defy the masters he'd sold his soul to. Third, Potter must have done something to leave the elf that cowed and unable to report to other members of the Wizengamot, and Draco thought he knew what it was.

_Use that power, Potter, yes. Become used to it. It is your right._

* * *

Harry sat down when he received the house-elf's message and stared almost blankly into the fireplace. He didn't know what else he was supposed to do now that he was launched on a course of rebellion against the Wizengamot.

Wait, though. Was it rebellion to warn one Wizengamot member against another? The situation had never come up before, since the Wizengamot had a tendency to simply deprive one of their own who failed them of prestige and power until they resigned in a huff. Harry had no idea why Gilfleur thought Malfoy was different, dangerous enough to be destroyed by an edict to Ragnarok, but it was strange.

_Face up to the truth, Harry, _he thought then, rubbing his face with one hand, feeling the shapes of his cheekbones, lips, and nose as though he had never felt them before. _If it's not rebellion now, it will become so in the future._

The door opened. Harry looked up and saw Risidell standing there. He nodded and tossed a packet of letters at Harry, which Harry caught. By the time he looked up again, the door was shut and Risidell was gone. He never stayed long, and Harry had no idea whether that had to do with some distaste for the place and the weapon, or because he was uncomfortable being close to Harry's power.

Harry paused suddenly. That second possibility would not have occurred to him before a few days ago. He had accepted it for a fact that all the Wizengamot despised him and wouldn't want to be around him any longer than necessary.

He swallowed. Was it right that Malfoy was changing his life so powerfully, so fast?

_But it has to be fast, _he thought then, shuddering as the magic nipped at his wrist joint. _The magic is killing me as quickly._

He flipped through the letters. One each from Ron and Hermione. One from George, asking Harry's advice for a new set of jokes for the Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes line. One from Molly, asking him how he was and advising him to prepare warmly for the Australian winter. One from Ginny, asking a few simple questions and bidding him farewell, as she always did, "with affection and regret."

Harry closed his eyes. Ten years. He hadn't seen his friends in ten years. The Wizengamot members helped him come up with a combination of shifting excuses that meant they had to stay away. The latest one, which had lasted three years or more, was that Harry had a combination of crippling social anxiety, from his years in the spotlight as a child, and of guilt. Ron and Hermione knew that a large number of Aurors had died in the disastrous raid on the Death Eaters that ended up raising his power.

They didn't know that Harry had been the one to kill them.

A wave of yearning broke across Harry and left him shaking and dazed.

_I want that life back, the life I was going to have. I want my friends. I want to be an Auror and have nothing more to worry about than whether a Dark wizard is going to be quicker than I am someday. I want to have a family and a place to go for dinner on Sunday nights and people to drink with. I want myself back._

If he cooperated with Malfoy's plans, even if he could somehow emerge from seclusion and see his friends again, it wouldn't be on the same terms. They would never understand his allying with Malfoy and becoming—

What? A Dark wizard? A ruler of the wizarding world?

Harry pushed the post away, feeling ill and indecisive again. He could rebel against the Wizengamot. He was not sure he could rebel against the image of the person he still felt himself to be, under all the changes and the encrustations of the years.

* * *

This time, the moment his Patronus landed in front of Potter, Draco knew something had changed. Potter was sitting with his head buried in his arms and didn't look up at the appearance of the silvery cormorant, though Draco knew he couldn't get that many visitors.

"Well?' Draco asked, when he had waited a short time.

Potter brought his arms down as though they were weighted with stones and stared at him with dull eyes. "Did you find out why Madam Gilfleur wanted to kill you?" he asked in a rasping voice.

"Not yet," Draco said, accepting the change of subject for what it was. "I had a few theories, but most of them were proven wrong today." Gilfleur had used his suggestions when she spoke in the Wizengamot, meaning that she wasn't afraid of his intelligence, and when Draco performed a subtle spell on her that would have revealed any blood connection to Kellerston and thus a reason for her to feel protective of him, nothing appeared. But Draco was not upset. Wizengamot members could indeed have subtle reasons. "I'll find out eventually. What's wrong with you, in the meantime?"

Potter swallowed noisily. "I don't think—Malfoy, what in the world are my friends going to think of me if I really do become something worse than I already am?"

"I fail to see how your situation could be worse," Draco said dryly. It was impossible not to glance around the large, dim prison chamber where Potter was kept, though Potter was so sunk in misery that he might not have noticed the cormorant turning its head. "Kept locked away from the world, serving as the Wizengamot's executioner, no one to help or speak to you as anything but a kind of servant."

"A weapon," Potter said. "Not a servant. That's what I am to them."

Draco raised his eyebrows and leaned forwards to make sure that he was seeing Potter to his best advantage at the end of that silvery tunnel the Patronus created. "And you don't resent that?"

Potter moved his hands restlessly back and forth. Draco relaxed with a little sigh. He might have got to Potter just in time. Whatever surge of confidence had animated him yesterday was wearing off, and he seemed to be reconsidering whether or not he could follow through on the promises he had made. Or that Draco had made to him, perhaps.

"I was thinking," Potter whispered. "My friends don't know where I've been the past ten years. They don't know that, when I stumbled into that ritual, I killed a bunch of people—not just Death Eaters, but Aurors. I would have to reveal myself as a murderer if I came out. I would have to see them again, which is what I've been wanting, but it wouldn't be in the best circumstances. It just—what am I going to _do_, Malfoy?" He looked up with haunted eyes.

Draco sighed, in relief this time, and leaned his chin on his fist. Yes, he was the best Mind-Healer for this that Potter could have found, and he was glad that he had contacted the idiot when he had. "Listen to me," he said. "Are you listening to me?" Potter's eyes had wandered away to the side, and with the limited field of vision that the Patronus gave him, Draco wasn't sure that he was still paying attention.

Potter nodded, blinked, and jerked his wide eyes back to Draco.

"Listen," Draco said again, and made sure that he kept his voice as calm as ever, along with his face. "There's no way that you can have a normal homecoming among your friends. Too much has changed. Too much has passed. They haven't seen you in ten years, you said?"

Potter nodded, and his eyes started to wonder again. But Draco had already had enough of his brooding, and didn't intend to allow him to get back to it.

"Then they won't be expecting to see you again, anyway," Draco said. "They certainly won't expect you to be the same. I knew Granger, Potter. She was smart." He decided to say nothing about the Weasel just yet, because he wasn't sure how close Potter was to the family and there was no point in starting a row over a name. "She must have decided by now that something _very _strange is happening. You might still give her an unpleasant surprise, but I really doubt she accepts the deceptions that the Wizengamot has been trying to foist on her."

Potter slowly shut his eyes and nodded again. "You may be right."

"Of course I am." With Potter as with house-elves, Draco thought at that moment. Take a high-handed tone from the beginning and they would follow you. "When you come forwards again, it may surprise them, frighten them, disgust them. But that _is not enough reason to hold back. _The life the Wizengamot has forced on you for the past ten years is disgraceful and ridiculous. Of course you can't simply go back to what you were before, but for you never to see them, even under controlled conditions…" Draco shook his head in wonder. He once would have wagered that nothing could part Potter from his friends. Then again, at the time he hadn't understood the full force of Potter's shame and guilt, his martyr complex, or the way that the Wizengamot would play on both. He was probably ashamed of his magic, too, considering the way that he had behaved. "It's wrong. You owe it to yourself to appear in the world again, to have what you want, and to accept that your relationship with your friends has altered so much that it wouldn't be worth recovering. You'll have to make a new friendship with them, that's all."

"What if they won't?" Potter had that look again as of an animal at bay, a look that Draco hated as unnatural for him. Let someone who didn't have all his power feel that way. "Accept me, that is, or become my friends again?"

"Then you move on and leave them behind," Draco said ruthlessly, but held up his hand when Potter opened his mouth to object. "Haven't you already done that? Why wasn't part of your price for serving the Wizengamot an occasional visit to them?"

Potter swallowed, and his eyelashes brushed his cheeks.

Draco nodded. "I _know_," he said with a false croon in his voice, one that Potter would realize was false, but it was better to have him fight with Draco than simply sit there like a dejected simpleton. "You wanted to keep your secrets. You were so horrified by what had happened, by the end of your dreams, that you thought it was the end of your life, too. You were willing to do anything, as long as the Wizengamot would keep you secret, keep others safe from you, and give you some purpose in life."

Potter stared up at him with his lips slowly parting. "How did you _know _that?" he whispered.

"Because I know you, and people like you," Draco shot back. He was shaking with excitement rather than anger, but these words still had to be spoken. They were the right way to handle Potter, to fill him with pride and master him and bring him back to some semblance of a working life. _If he would have considered that he had a right to a working life in the first place, this would be easier. _But it wasn't like that, and that simply meant Draco had to change things until it was. "Always afraid of yourselves. Always knowing what you want, dreaming of it in your deepest hidden minds, but afraid to reach out and grasp it even when it's close. You would rather be miserable than suffer the torments of your conscience. Or at least, you _think_ that," he added, and dropped his voice to a murmur while staring as directly into Potter's face as he could across the miles that separated them. "I think ten years of misery should have been enough to teach you that conscience's price isn't so high."

"How would you know?" Potter spat, his hands working over each other to the point that Draco thought he would bruise his knuckles. "I don't think that you've ever had a conscience to quiet."

"Not in the ultra-refined sense that you apparently have, no." Draco examined Potter down his nose. "But I had to choose to break with my family's political tradition, which had never had someone on the Wizengamot except in the times it was a lesser power, because we prefer to be in the shadows rather than in the forefront. I had to admit that my father was not going to recover from the madness that consumed him, and that a political career was more important than remaining at his side. I had to learn to work with others, which I don't like, and compromise, and _wait_. I would have been in the Wizengamot five years ago, seven years ago, if I could have. But that was a younger man's dream. I changed myself, Potter, because I came to recognize that my more basic desires—the longing for power—mattered more than the sacrifices I would have to make."

"I can't say that my magic matters more to me than my friends," Potter protested.

Draco sneered mildly at him. "And yet, you didn't commit suicide the moment you became a murderer. You didn't fight to remain close to your friends before all else. I think, Potter, that your basic desire is to _survive_." He paused for effect, then added, "And now that I've come along and offered you a richer way of doing that, you shrink back. You're going to have to choose life along with survival."

He dismissed his Patronus before Potter could respond. Yes, he was the kind of partner who would have to listen to the echoes of Draco's words in his head for a time before he could stand to speak his acceptance of them aloud.

Draco leaned back in his luxurious chair and shook his head. What must it be like to have a conscience like Potter's? Like having giant wings that you could never use to fly, he reckoned. They were huge and decorative, but inconvenient far more than beautiful, grotesque in their size, and liable to trip one every time one turned around. Draco had had his own disabilities to conquer, but he was glad that had never been one of them.

* * *

_You didn't fight to remain close to your friends before all else._

That one sentence Malfoy had spoken, of all of them, stayed with Harry the longest. He found himself on his feet pacing back and forth, swearing furiously under his breath, trying to understand his rage.

Ron and Hermione were important to him. He had assumed without thinking about it that of course they were the _most _important.

But Malfoy was right. What kind of person, who had his magic to bargain with, would have tamely accepted the Wizengamot's edict that he had to vanish from the sight of _everyone_, rather than meeting them under tightly controlled circumstances? Harry knew that Ron and Hermione would have kept secrets for his sake, at least, even if he couldn't trust all the Weasleys.

But he hadn't tried that.

Harry bowed his head and gritted his teeth, telling himself to be as calm as he could. He couldn't simply lash out with his magic and level the building, or even do target practice, the way he could have in the Aurors, to exhaust himself and the shame and other emotions swimming through his mind. The wards would scream. He would lose control. It was wrong.

But he had to get away. He could do it, the way he had when he went to meet with Malfoy the other day. And although he had never done this before, still, if he was careful, and if he went to a place that was previously warded, then no one should be able to sense his magic from a distance. The wards would tingle, not scream. The Wizengamot considered that of course some traces of his power would be left behind, and they had stories ready in place for those. Only a complete execution or annihilation would be a problem.

Harry didn't plan on that. But he _had _to use some of the magic that danced like lightning through his muscles and made them jerk and form into new patterns.

He turned and searched briefly among the things standing on the mantle above his fireplace, which included ornaments that the Wizengamot had used to try and buy his favor, a saltcellar, the cutlery he kept to eat his food, a brush, a comb, and a number of miscellaneous cups, glasses, and bowls that he rolled his eyes at. He was used to thinking of his life here as simple and deprived, but it still seemed that he would accumulate a lot of useless objects where he had no idea where they came from.

_Ah, there it is, _he thought, as his finger finally scraped across the covered china bowl of modified Floo powder that Risidell had given him.

Harry couldn't use ordinary Floo powder any more than he could use ordinary cleaning charms or conjuring charms, but the Wizengamot had managed to work out a solution so that their executioner could come and go unseen—one reason he had a fireplace in his rooms in the first place. Harry cast the handful of powder he'd chosen into the flames, took a deep breath, and plucked a name out of the air.

"Number Twelve Grimmauld Place!"

The fire sang and turned an odd, deep, violent shade of green. Harry leaped forwards, drawing his cloak around his face. He couldn't use his magic to lift protective spells around himself, and he would always get a bit burned without the shield of the reinforced cloth.

The fire grabbed him, flames lunging out to curl around his legs, and dragged him forwards. Harry maintained his balance with an effort, and then began to do the odd dance that was usually necessary, leaping over the embers that grew many-branched, tangling himself among the flames while trying to keep a layer of fabric between his skin and the heat, and flinging himself backwards when it seemed as though the top of the fireplace would collide with his shoulder.

The modified Floo powder made the fire into a force of destruction, one sufficient to allow his magic to work with it. Harry turned his head sideways, drew in a quick breath of fresh air, and then curled into a ball and let his magic rise.

_You could have done something like this long since, _he thought, as he felt his magic and the magic of the fire join like great hands and fling him into the distance. _If there's a workaround for the Floo, could have found a workaround for other things that trouble you and keep you from living a full life. Malfoy is right._

Of course, for every one of those solutions he would have to find someone else who could help him. And that was the problem. The Wizengamot wouldn't be amenable to unauthorized trips outside their headquarters every day, or unauthorized visits with his friends, or rituals to modify his magic without knowing exactly what he wanted to do with it, even if any of them were strong enough to help him with the rituals in the first place.

As he stumbled out into the drawing room of Number Twelve, Harry decided that he probably couldn't trust Malfoy more than most of them, except to follow his own priorities—and those priorities were different from keeping Harry imprisoned and safe.

He looked around the drawing room with distant eyes. He'd told Ron and Hermione that he'd sold the house, but that was mainly because he had known even then that he might need to come back here someday, and it would be more than awkward to appear on his best friends' hearth after having been gone for ten years.

_You could have kept up with them more than this._

Harry turned and hurried up the stairs to the second floor, where the wards were strongest around one room where he had stored the Dark artifacts that he couldn't disarm, disenchant, or simply hand over to the Aurors. When he stepped inside and shut the door behind him, he could hear the reassuring hum of the wards as they engaged. He was surrounded by piles of crates, boxes, books, and polished bronze instruments that might have meant something to the people who had originally owned them, but Harry didn't know what they meant and didn't want to.

They would make excellent targets, though.

He raised his hands.

The lightning was waiting beneath his skin, and it came.

There were no lights in the room. Harry had a prime view, assuming he wanted it, of his skin glowing blue-white from the inside, a brief flash, and then the sudden waves of smoke and dust and less-than-dust that came towards him. Another flash of lightning cauterized the burning, and then another after that removed the smell of electricity from the air. His magic could destroy most traces of itself, which had been useful many times when the Wizengamot was trying to keep someone from detecting Ragnarok's magical signature.

But it wasn't enough. It was too quick. Harry could feel the magic pressing against his skin and driving him mad lessen, but he had to break something apart in as much slow motion as his magic would permit.

Or he needed to stand bathed in the fire of Malfoy's controlled power again and feel what he could be, if he dared.

Harry shivered, and then focused on one crate in front of him that held what had looked like a telescope, except that, when Harry had looked through it, he found a single purple eye staring back at him. The sight of the eye was revolting, and he had never forgotten it. He hadn't been able to store the telescope with anything else, either, since the other objects vanished or began to decay overnight. Harry felt a small, vicious smile stretch his mouth, and he lifted his hand and held it out towards the crate. The magic inside him began to fill his nails from the inside with pouches of power.

_Destroy that for me, _Harry told his power. _The telescope. I want it burned to less than ashes, the way that I know you can do. You're going to do it for me, and you're going to let me watch, rather than simply obliterate it._

He felt stupid a moment later voicing his thoughts in that way, but the magic oozed out from under his nails in crawling tendrils of blue-black and traveled forwards slowly enough for him to see, which had never happened before. Harry leaned back on his elbows and heels and waited.

The tendrils hovered about the telescope for a moment, as if gauging the size or danger of their target. Then they waved around the edges and abruptly snapped together.

Harry shuddered and arched up from the floor as a pull seemed to gather together from the center of his chest at the same time. Thick, thrilling, sexual, it touched him in the groin and the heels and everywhere in between. His legs shook with it. Harry raised his head, panting, and flicked drops of saliva from his lips with his tongue, and stared.

The blue-black vines had the telescope in a tangle of leaves. The telescope was fighting, bulging and flexing, and Harry could sometimes see glimpses of metal through the leaves, as if it might win out. But each time, the vines only shifted their stance or their angle of attack and pressed in, calm and patient as a flytrap.

Harry felt the pull again and finally realized that it coincided with more and more magic flowing into the vines. They were drawing on him to destroy the telescope, but they were feeding him at the same instant. Harry had never felt something so wonderful, and it helped that he could see the telescope crisping now, the edges of it decaying as it had caused other things to decay in its time.

A low, anguished scream rose from the edge of the telescope, and at the same moment the magic closed in with a rippling roar of completion.

Harry came.

He gasped, throat burning, neck aching as it arched back, hands searching for and finding no means of support, and the air in his lungs turned to fire. The pleasure was more acute than anything else, more painful than pleasing. Harry still had his eyes open to see the telescope becoming a glowing seed of black and then nothingness, but that was more because his orgasm had fixed them that way than because he had kept them open of his own free will.

The blue-black light died. Harry was once more in dimness, and the crate and the telescope had vanished from in front of him. His pants were soaked, and there was a wet spot on his trousers when he reached down and cautiously felt at them.

That had _never _happened before.

Harry rolled over, when he thought he could persuade his legs to carry him, and climbed shakily to his feet. He shook his head again and again, and vibrated with the tremors that were the residue of what had happened, rather than of what was still happening.

His body felt quiet and empty, his magic still present but sleeping. Harry found his way back downstairs and through the fireplace; he'd made sure to tuck away another pinch of the modified Floo powder in his robe pocket. And it did get him back to the room beneath the Wizengamot's headquarters, though with a few more burns than normal, since his power wasn't present in such an amount to take up its part in the transport. Harry called a house-elf, demanded burn paste, and settled his head against the chair.

He hadn't decided yet how he would want to approach his friends. Malfoy hadn't convinced him that he should think of power before all else.

But he did know that he felt better, having seized control of his magic and demanded that it do as he told it, than he had in years.

The qualms of his conscience no longer seemed all that should define him.


	6. Clash

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—Clash_

"Mr. Malfoy. What are you doing here?"

Draco smiled and dipped his head to Gilfleur as though it was a coincidence that he had run into her at Atlas's, the most exclusive restaurant in wizarding London. "Madam," he said. "Don't mind me. I realized that I hadn't had the eels here in _years_. It was a treat that I couldn't readily afford for some time, of course, and I'm afraid that dreams might have made it more delicious in my head than it could ever be in reality. But I had to try."

Gilfleur half-relaxed, though Draco could see the careful way she kept her hands at her sides, as if she would have to snatch her wand out of her pocket. "The eels are still very good," she said. "But I didn't expect to see you here so soon after you joined the Wizengamot."

Draco raised a curious eyebrow. "Why not?"

He watched Gilfleur struggle with that for a moment. He was sure it had to do with money and that carefully cultivated image of half-genteel poverty he'd come up with, but of course Gilfleur could hardly say that. She had expected him to turn his head to the side, politely allowing the hint without commenting on it.

"I don't know," Gilfleur said, and she seemed to have decided to play the innocent rather than apologize. Her eyes widened and her teeth all but flashed at him. "At any rate, I hope that you enjoy your meal." She bowed to him and started to turn away.

Draco moved his lips as if repeating her words to himself. If she glanced over her shoulder at him, that was all she should see.

In reality, he was repeating a spell he had studied over the past few days and practiced until he could do it without his wand. He stood in place, watching her go as if admiring the swish of her blue-green robe, and awaited the result.

The spell briefly made Gilfleur's shoulders glow as if the light had caught on a particularly bright thread in her robes. One reason Draco had chosen to use this one instead of another was the subtlety of it. That spark, and the spell rebounded back to Draco, carrying the information that he needed.

_Yes_.

Draco smiled, tilted his head, and allowed himself to close his eyes for a second in enjoyment of the sweet victory. Then the waiter came to lead him to his table, and Draco followed willingly, wishing only that he had someone he trusted enough to dine with right now and explain to. He could explain to Potter, but having him appear in public, in an area that contained a Wizengamot member, would have taken more planning than Draco wanted to expend for such a small and self-indulgent pleasure.

The spell had seen beneath Gilfleur's defenses, and revealed her little secret to him. It was no wonder that she had become nervous around him after seeing him touch Kellerston.

Gilfleur had been through her own rituals to raise her power.

* * *

Harry didn't think he'd slept in a day, though of course it was difficult to judge the passage of time here unless he kept to the strict, day-imitating schedule that the Wizengamot had dreamed up for him. He would sit down or stretch out to sleep, and then he would have to leap to his feet as another possible, cloudy vision of the future exploded across his senses.

Could he do this? Was it possible?

And each time it seemed as though he could answer _yes _to more and more of the visions.

His magic surged and circled in him, and Harry sometimes spoke to it, asking it wordless questions, ordering it to destroy a tiny patch of carpet or one of the pebbles stuck between the larger stones of the fireplace to make them balance. Each time, it obeyed. And each time, Harry could feel the pull in his groin, the ecstasy that made him groan and pant and stagger.

It had been ten years since someone else had touched him. Harry had never made any attempt to remedy that, either, the same way he had made no serious attempt to see his friends. Why should he, when the magic would kill him soon? And when he was so guilty, and would probably destroy anyone he slept with when his magic became excited or when he discovered them cheating on him?

Now, though, Malfoy had given him another way to look at it. Harry hadn't done anything to solve those problems because his primary desire was to survive, and he'd become obsessed with that instead, in circumstances that didn't seem to promise much. He had _always _been less of a good person than he thought himself.

He wanted to see Malfoy again.

Harry thought of summoning a house-elf, but it was unusual for him, and the last thing he wanted to do right now was ring an alarm in the mind of any Wizengamot member. He would have to wait until his next meal—whenever that was—and demand another message delivered. Or perhaps he would simply tell Malfoy that he was leaving, risky as that was, and direct Malfoy to meet him in Grimmauld Place.

A new shiver ran down his spine, and Harry opened his mouth to taste the air, feeling puzzled for a moment. This pleasure was like and unlike the pleasure he had started to feel when he used his magic slowly.

Then he traced it to its source, or thought he did, when he remembered how he had felt while the house-elf stared up at him, when he pictured Malfoy's likely expression if Harry tried to give him an order.

He liked the thought of commanding people.

_Or part of me does, _Harry thought when that single moment of shock had pulsed through him like a sunburst.

_I wonder what Malfoy would say to that? _

He probably wouldn't be pleased. He was the one who had begun this association, after all, and he probably thought of himself as still the one in charge. And he was a member of the Wizengamot during the period in wizarding history when it was actually powerful and dangerous. Someone like that wouldn't be willing to accept a lesser position.

Harry also couldn't simply say that his magic was more powerful and so he should lead. Malfoy's magic was weaker but more flexible than his; Harry could only threaten to kill him, while Malfoy could hurt him to the point of death without killing him if he wanted. And Harry knew almost nothing about the political configurations of the outside world except what he had managed to pick up by accident when on his hunting missions and from Ron and Hermione's letters. He needed someone who could watch out for him.

Harry nodded slowly. He wouldn't order Malfoy around, then. He would simply make it clear that _he _was not a helpless tool or a passive one to be fitted to Malfoy's hand. He had acted like that, but only when he thought there was no hope otherwise. The moment he had some, he was going to grasp his life and change it.

Malfoy and he would be allies, not master and puppet, and not Wizengamot member and executioner, the way Harry had acted with Malfoy's peers. It would be that way, or Harry would know why not.

* * *

Draco was still chuckling when he reached home. It was most ironic that Gilfleur had hidden her powers so well that Draco couldn't find them without a special check, and then had betrayed herself the moment she realized—from seeing Draco reach out and touch Kellerston's heart; it had to be that, since it was the only display of his extra magic that Draco had made in front of her—that someone else had them, too. Draco would have been interested and tried to find some way to make an alliance, to trade knowledge. Gilfleur could only go to someone she knew had the power to kill inconvenient enemies and demand a death.

Without actually daring to unleash Potter yet. Draco paused thoughtfully inside his front door and allowed his house-elves to remove his cloak while he thought. That was unusual. What could Gilfleur be waiting for? If she was afraid that Draco would learn her secret, or betray it, or compete with her, then she could have killed him before he was warned. After all, she had no idea that he and Potter were allies, and she would have had no reason to think that Potter would refuse her, so ordering him to kill Draco held no risks.

_Something to think about, _Draco decided, and then noticed one of his elves was bowing and scraping in front of him the way they only did when they bore news that would potentially displease him. He sighed. "What is it, Silpy?"

"I'm here."

Draco straightened quickly. Potter was striding down the corridor towards him, looking taller than Draco remembered. Although that could come from the aura of power that moved with him, spreading around him like wings or a cloak.

Draco narrowed his eyes and watched Potter speculatively. He wasn't sure if coming here and moving around like this in the middle of his unshielded magic was a threat, but he didn't think so. Potter had his face set, but not in an angry way. It seemed as if he had shut his expression like a wall, refusing to allow anything to break him now. One hand was curled at his side, and Draco thought it could as easily reach out as strike. Once or twice, when he had come to a halt in front of Draco, he twitched as though he resented Draco's scrutiny, but that didn't have to mean anything.

"Welcome to Malfoy Manor," Draco said. "May I inquire why you decided to visit me today?"

"The Wizengamot didn't come," Potter said. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes such a brilliant green and his pupils so dilated that Draco wondered if he'd drunk something to give him courage. But he could smell nothing on him, and, from the way that Potter's eyes darted around the room, Draco thought the explanation was simpler: that he hadn't been in someone else's house on a visit in a decade. Then Potter took a deep breath as if hearing his thoughts and snapped his gaze back to Draco's face, keeping it there. "They usually come—I mean, by this time—by this time in the day, I know if they're going to give me a commission. I didn't think anyone would miss me."

"You are undoubtedly right," Draco said. He wasn't entirely sure about that, but then, he also didn't think that any members of the Wizengamot would confront Potter directly if they started to suspect his loyalty. "Welcome." He reached out and hooked a hand under Potter's arm. "Would you like to come and have something to drink?"

Potter shook his head, and a glitter of magic, white as light reflected from rippling water, raced along the backs of his hands. "Not a good idea."

"Perhaps not," Draco said, as calmly as he could when he felt the magic thrumming beneath Potter's skin for only the second time. "But you'll take something to eat, at least. A first taste of the luxury—do pardon the pun—that will be yours when you start coming into your birthright."

Potter jerked his head to the side like a startled horse, and Draco let him go. Potter stood there in the middle of the corridor, hands twisting so hard that Draco thought he would break a bone. Well, he had healing potions if that happened.

"What is this?" Potter asked abruptly. "What are we working towards? Are you going to—to rule the world, and you need my help? Or is growing your power its own goal? Or is it something else?"

_Ah._ Draco felt as though he could finally put down a burden he had been carrying for years. He took Potter's arm again, and this time, Potter let him.

"I've been waiting to tell someone that for a very long time," he said. "Appreciative audiences are so hard to find. Won't you come and sit down? And while you eat, I'll talk."

* * *

Harry had forgotten what fresh fruit tasted like.

No, wait, that wasn't true. He had got oranges and apples from the Wizengamot, and sometimes berries in season, or what he assumed was in season, since he wasn't exactly living in the same world as anyone else.

But it had never tasted the same. It had tasted musty, or it broke apart in his hand before he could get it to his mouth, or the juice was just little drops instead of the long streams that broke through when his teeth pierced the skin of _this _fruit. Harry suspected that he wasn't being rational or making a fair comparison; maybe this fruit tasted so much better because it was eaten in freedom rather than as a slave.

But that didn't matter to him. He didn't have to care. He devoured the strawberries, raspberries, slices of orange, and slices of melon that Malfoy offered him, and had to fight the temptation to lick his hands afterwards rather than wipe them off, especially when the house-elves brought in bread so thickly drizzled with butter and honey that Harry was hard put to find the taste of the scone underneath them. The food was sweet, and plentiful, and fulfilling, and Harry ate and ate, with no sense that he could only have what the house-elf provided him and he was selfish to ask for anything else.

And he listened.

Malfoy leaned back in his chair on the other side of the small table, watching Harry with a faint smile as he ate. Harry glared at him now and then, hoping to show Malfoy that he couldn't buy Harry with a good meal. But Malfoy's smile never had a trace of contempt, only of wistfulness, as if he wished that he could enjoy the food as much himself.

_Or as if he thinks that I should have had this long since._

Harry shrugged, a little uncomfortably, and snagged another scone from the mess of butter and honey, leaning back to listen again. Malfoy had already told him, in more detail, how he had struggled to master the rituals that would grant him extra power, how he had risen and started working towards the Wizengamot once he saw all the political strength was tending that way, how he had watched others fail around him and learned from their mistakes. But he hadn't yet got to the question Harry had asked him.

Perhaps that had been on purpose, now that Harry thought about it. He wasn't sure that he could have _listened _properly before now.

"What do I want?" Malfoy stirred one finger around the outside of his glass and met Harry's eyes with wide, bright ones. "No less than to be the strongest wizard in the world. I want to stand at the highest point, look out, and know that no one can challenge me. Simple, you might think, but it's not as simple in practice. There are natural deficiencies in my talent to be overcome, and my training, and my temperament. It took me years to realize that while magical power was one way of measuring strength, it wasn't the only one, that I had to have political skills and money to go along with that."

"I thought you didn't have that much money," Harry muttered, leaning back with a dish of strawberries and cream, as his mind locked onto rumors that he'd heard a few years ago.

"Illusion," Malfoy said. "I have enough to buy luxuries and make bribes. More than that, no, not yet. A lot of it has gone on the rituals. But I'm much less poor than I would lead people to believe—one reason that I almost never invite them to the Manor." He paused, fingers stroking the bubbles that covered the top of his glass. Harry wasn't sure what he was drinking and wasn't sure why he should care. "And what do you want?"

Harry glanced quickly at him, to see if this was a joke. But Malfoy's gaze was steady and inviting, and he looked as if he would believe almost anything Harry said.

Harry swallowed once and then murmured, "Freedom. I—didn't realize how much I wanted that until you started talking about it, but then I ventured out yesterday after we spoke. I went to a shielded place and used my magic to destroy a few objects there, but it wasn't enough. So I commanded my magic to destroy something slowly, and that worked. It _worked_. I realized that I didn't have to stay behind wards all the time if I wanted to keep the rest of the world safe. I want to walk where I wish, and do what I want, and do other things with my magic than simply destroy, as exciting as that could be." He swallowed the last strawberry with regret, closing his eyes so that he could savor the tingle on his tongue.

"You deserve to have that," Malfoy said, and his voice was warm. "I think our desires complement each other. Be powerful, and you can never be made a slave."

Harry opened his eyes. His head was clearing somewhat from his daze of pleasure. "How does that work, though? If you want to be the most powerful wizard in the world, then you'll need any ally, even me, to be second-best."

Malfoy's eyes were enormous in the firelight, the grey irises flickering with the dancing flames. He reached out and Harry took his hand as though he had planned to clasp it. Malfoy pulled him closer, closer, until Harry had to rise to his feet and take a step forwards or risk upsetting the little table between them. Malfoy had stood up at the same time and put his drink down, though Harry hadn't realized that.

Now he brought his hand around so that his wrist rested against the back of Harry's neck and whispered, "I could tolerate an equal. As long as there is no one _stronger _than me. I need to stand highest. I don't need to stand alone."

He called his magic to the surface of his skin again.

Harry shut his eyes. This was what he had wanted, he thought in a rush of feeling like falling out of a cloud into midair, more than he had wanted freedom or control of his magic in the last few days or a good meal. He had wanted to touch Malfoy again while the fire leaped through him, this holy fire that advanced and retreated and rose and spiraled around him in a shining gyre.

Malfoy sighed. Harry couldn't tell what he was feeling. He didn't care. He reached out and laid his hands on Malfoy's arms, sinking his fingers deep.

The fire danced into his hands.

Harry gasped. Shimmering curtains of heat swayed around him, parting and stroking against his skin like gauzy cloth, billowing and sighing. Harry tilted his head back while keeping his hands in place, bending towards the floor, trying to understand how the heat he was only used to in his groin could be throbbing from every part of his body at once.

He felt like a polished jewel, the light of magic reflecting off his facets, turning his body to colored glass.

"Potter," Malfoy choked. Harry opened his eyes and stared up at those hot grey eyes so far away, and wondered what Malfoy was feeling from him. Surely not the same thing, because Harry couldn't control his magic the same way.

But it was enough to make a curl of brilliant blue flame emerge from his throat as Harry watched.

Harry surged back upright and captured Malfoy's lips, sticking his tongue into Malfoy's mouth to pursue that curl of flame. Malfoy cried out into his throat and seized him, pulling him so near that Harry's head ached from the proximity. They swayed back and forth, supported by magic or the table or the chairs; Harry could feel only a solid, real presence near them, not tell what it was.

Malfoy turned then and laid Harry down. Harry went willingly, because he could cling to Malfoy and bring him with him, so that they lay there, chest to chest.

The magic hissed around them, and warbled, and twined, and Harry found himself on a pile of shifting scarlet snakes, dazzles of light vibrating past his eyes. He opened his legs, clasped them shut against Malfoy's hips, and arched up.

Malfoy closed his eyes with a shaky groan. The fluttering of his lashes complemented the flashes of radiation Harry could see working through his veins. He opened his mouth and clamped it onto Malfoy's throat like a vampire.

Malfoy shuddered and huffed above him, hands flying across Harry's sides. Harry was the one in control here, the one anchored, despite lying beneath Malfoy. He laughed and felt the scrape of scales across his skin before he humped his hips forwards crudely but powerfully, once, twice, again.

Malfoy was shaking. Harry knew his orgasm was coming.

And the magic came with it.

The fire rushed out of the hearth and whirled around them both, spinning a net of crimson weighted with gold at the corners. Malfoy's body grew so warm beneath Harry's hands that he would have had to let him go in pain if not for the delighted answer of _his _magic, which felt destruction around it and knew it could rise. Their powers reached out and grabbed each other, familiar as two hands, as the Floo powder and the power that would swing Harry through the fire to his destination.

His body was afire. Harry could feel his skin crisping and curling away, his bones bursting apart in explosions of heat. His back arched again and again, out of his control, simple spasms. His legs were having convulsions, and he wasn't in control anymore. The magic gathered itself and sprang, using its claws to tear and rasp at him, and he came as if he was dying, as if he was splitting, as if he was burning.

The pleasure was so intense that it spun him apart. Harry shattered into stars, into sparks, on a dark background. He descended into nothingness, accompanied only by the keen sensation of his own helpless whimpers.

He opened his eyes into stillness.

Malfoy lay sprawled on top of him, mouth open, head hanging. His blond hair clung to his cheeks, plastered there. Harry tried to pull a strand of it away and found he couldn't. Malfoy grunted and stirred in discomfort, blinking hard. His eyes were stuck shut with what looked like powdered diamonds.

Harry turned his head.

They didn't lie in the midst of desolation, but it was bloody close. The furniture around them was scorched, the carpet gaping with black holes. Stones had been shredded loose from the fireplace, and the walls were scored with the passage of their flight. The curtains on the windows had blown away. Harry looked down and realized they were lying on the remnants of the small table, which had become a few exhausted snakes.

"Wow," he whispered.

Malfoy looked down at him. Harry met his gaze, fearless for the first time in years.

* * *

Draco had not intended to destroy one of the finest rooms in the Manor. He had not intended to have sex with Potter, for that matter, or do anything but touch him with a bit of his magic to show him what _could _be.

But for the first time in more than a decade, he had tasted a new form of power. And his heart was alive in his chest with something keener and hotter and more painful than joy.

He said nothing, because words could not convey what he felt, but simply coiled his tongue around Potter's lips and let that be his answer.


	7. Collision

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—Collision_

"What's going to happen next?" Harry asked later, when they were sitting in a different room and eating another meal. This time, Malfoy was eating with him, and the food wasn't as wildly sweet, but Harry could bear the strong red meat and the sharp cheese. It was what he needed after an experience as intense as that one.

"That depends on what you intend to do," Malfoy said, laying down a block of white cheese that stank, as far as Harry was concerned, and leaning forwards to study him. Harry licked his lips and tried to keep his attention focused on the table. He had no reason to be dreaming of what Malfoy's chin would taste like. "Do you need to make up your mind about how far you're willing to go, or can I trust you to keep up your part of the conquest?"

Harry shuddered a little and took one more bite of the lightly sauced chicken in front of him. "It would help if I knew what we're supposed to be conquering," he said. "The British wizarding world? The Wizengamot? Europe?"

"Yes," Malfoy said.

Harry stared at him. He would have laughed a short time ago, if anyone had said anything like that to him. Who did Malfoy think he _was_?

But now all that happened was that his breath became short and fantasies crowded his mind. He couldn't define those fantasies very well, some of them were heavy and richly colored and some of them were thin and delicate, but he knew they existed, and he knew he could grasp them if he dared.

_Ridiculous things become real when you have power that's capable of achieving them, _Harry thought, and his face felt hot and his heartbeat dizzying. _I always did, but I didn't dare think that way. And why not? What kind of moral censure will come down on me if I do? Having the thoughts isn't the same as doing the actions._

He was starting to get a glimpse of just how cramped his previous life had been. He ducked his head and ate one more bite of meat, and then he felt Malfoy's hand come to rest on his as it reached across the table.

Harry froze and gazed at the slender white fingers, the blue veins glowing through them, the shadows of nail and knuckle. No one would ever think, from looking at that hand, that Malfoy contained enough power to break worlds, or an ambition that would set him up as a kind of king. But then again, Harry thought, turning his hand over to grasp it back, most people probably wouldn't say that about his blunt nails or square palms, either.

"Listen to me," Malfoy said in a focused voice. "I can only go as far as my power will take me, alone. I need your cooperation to both increase the power and achieve my ambitions. For that, I need to keep you happy. We won't do anything that you don't want to do, because ultimately that would be fatal to me as well as to you."

Harry waited a moment. He would have expected to feel creeping disgust that Malfoy was speaking like that. Honesty was one thing, but transparent power-hunger and naked greed was another.

But instead, all he felt was swelling excitement, and an emotion that was so strange he waited for long moments to identify it, feeling it trickle through him like a heavy white flood of water. Approval.

He approved of the way that Malfoy was approaching this. He could have tried lies and subtler manipulations; he could have tried to pretend that he had something at heart other than his own good, such as the good of the people who would be better-ruled by him than the Wizengamot. But he didn't.

Harry was tired of pretense more than anything else, he thought suddenly. Pretending that his magic was evil, pretending that he served the Wizengamot like a good little weapon and dreamed of nothing else, pretending that he had moved to Australia and that he couldn't visit his friends. He had run away from all the complications because he had been sure—sure, without even questioning or testing the conclusion—that that was the better way.

But merely having this level of magic didn't make him evil. It was the purpose he wielded it for that would do that.

Feeling as though he had smashed through a wall into the middle of a different and more difficult life, Harry lifted his head and took a deep breath. "I'm willing to begin the first of those rituals right now. We might as well take advantage of my presence in your house, don't you think?"

Malfoy's eyes sharpened, and his breathing briefly made him sound as if he was having a seizure. Then he leaned across the table, cradled Harry's head in heavy, pinching hands, and brought his lips down on his.

Harry returned the kiss eagerly, thrusting his tongue out so he could match him snog for snog. His body was stiff in all the right places, and his excitement made him feel as if he was pitching downhill in a sled, out of control. No matter what he met along the way, he knew he wouldn't die, but there were other possible destinies, other problems. Harry thought he was finally ready to meet them.

* * *

Draco nodded to Potter, who stopped and stood obediently in place on one of the points of the five-pointed star laid into the dungeon floor. Draco walked one more time around the circle that contained the star, studying the thin, precise lines of the carvings. One mistake could make the ritual blow up in their faces.

But he saw no such mistake. Why should he have? He cared more about these rituals to raise his power than anything else, and he had made his preparations over years and checked and rechecked them again, as well as hiring experts to check them who had agreed to be _Obliviated _afterwards. Of course he would leave nothing to chance, and of course he would not rely on his own eyes alone.

It was finally going to happen. He was finally going to have the kind of control and power that he'd always dreamed of.

"Ready?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows at Potter.

Potter nodded quickly, once, and then seemed to realize that the swiftness of his gesture might not inspire much confidence in Draco. This time, the nod was slower, and he offered a temperate smile. Draco dipped his head in response—he and Potter had gone over this several times now, and Potter had absorbed the instructions as if he was starved for new material to think about—and then reached down and picked up the silver chisel that had lain on the floor at his feet.

"I call the fire." His voice sounded smaller in the confines of the dungeon room than he had thought it would. But Draco had performed rituals like this before, as many as he could alone, and he was used to the sensation. He kept his eyes fixed on the chisel, which shone like a star in his hand, and the world around him wavered as if he was seeing it through a curtain of smoke or incense. His ordinary perceptions were shifting and slipping away, to be replaced by ritual perceptions.

"I call the air." He turned and faced the wall behind him, and a glassy image of the chisel formed and fell into his free hand. Draco held them both up, displaying them to the silent powers behind the ritual, whatever combination of forces in magic and nature made them work. He thought he could feel someone bowing to him from an immense distance, but he had never been sure how real that was. He turned to face the circle again.

Potter was staring at him in wonder, but he had remembered Draco's instructions well enough to pick up the stone knife that had been lying at his feet. He offered it to the star, head bowed, and turned in a slow circle so that he was facing the outer ring.

"I call the earth," he said. His voice shook infinitesimally, but steadied as Draco listened. Draco had a smile of approval ready when Potter turned round again. It wouldn't do to discourage him before the magic proper began.

Draco looked to the center of the star, and saw an image forming there, a reflection in a seemingly distorted mirror that grew more and more real as he watched. In an instant it was a knife, with the same kind of blocky hilt and slender blade as the one that Potter held, but rippling with the consistency and color of water.

It hovered, then flew towards Potter, who barely got a hand up to catch it in time. Draco raised one eyebrow in disapprobation. Potter flushed, but maintained his grip on both knives and nodded shakily. Draco took him at his word and raised the silvery chisel of light, then the airy one. Potter mimicked him with the knives in order, the real and the unreal.

"I will carve out my power," Draco said, and the dungeon echoed around him and then settled into a listening silence. Potter looked half-alarmed. Draco wondered why. Of course, if the ritual that had changed his magic hadn't been of his own making, then he might have never experienced this sensation of someone, or something, watching and judging.

Draco lashed sideways with the silver chisel, towards the uppermost point of the star. The air shuddered and rang, and the chisel stuck in something invisible but solid. Draco laughed and brought the glassy chisel forwards in turn. The world sighed as he reached the full extension of his arms and then hauled back.

The air in front of him tore down the front like a set of cheap robes ruined by an impatient lover. Draco pulled his chisels towards the sides, coaxing, and the rip grew wider and wider, flooding the room with pale light. Draco stepped sideways and launched the glassy chisel from his hand. It vanished in midair, and he stood in the center of a pool of growing radiance, moving backwards in careful steps so that he could let it pour into the world.

When he glanced to the side, it was to find Potter staring at him in wonder, completely ignoring the part he was supposed to play.

Draco didn't dare speak a word; unexpected phrases at this point in a ritual could take on a life of their own. He narrowed his eyes and jerked his head, though, and Potter started and came to life.

"I will cut out my power," he said, voice uncertain, and then knelt down and stabbed into the center of the star with the stone knife. Draco could see the muscles in his shoulders flexing and knew he was bracing himself for the collision of blade with floor.

Instead, though, the blade slid smoothly into the floor, as if it were cutting ink or butter. Potter staggered, but luckily kept from falling face-down into the center of the star, which would have had effects that Draco didn't care to speculate on. His watery knife joined the first a moment later, in a parallel cut.

The floor shuddered, and the stone flowed aside. Draco caught a glimpse of brightness below and licked his lips. He knew what this was—he was drawing power from the molten core of the earth—but for once, knowledge failed to lighten his impression of awe and terror.

Potter hopped backwards on his heels. Draco tensed, but he paused, teetering, on the curve of the circle around the star rather than crossing it. His eyes were even wider now, and he had lost his glasses somewhere along the way. The watery knife, still embedded in the floor, turned to steam in the wake of the fiery light.

Red light from the floor spilled up and towards the pale light that Draco had pulled out of the air. Draco watched them inch closer to each other, his nose stinging from the rapidity of the breaths he drew.

They met.

And exploded.

Draco laughed aloud and raced forwards, aiming for the uppermost point of the star. The light danced around him, not offering heat against his skin or a sensation or pressure or anything other than intense radiance, and then landed on the circle that surrounded them. It charged like a wildfire that had agreed to burn only in a designated area.

Draco grinned fiercely and bent his head to his task, his feet churning wildly along the lines of the star, never deviating from them. His task was to reach the highest point of the star before the light did. Even if he did not, however, he would catch some of the power that that mingled and dancing fire, a pale rose in color, represented.

But that was not enough for him. He did not want to absorb part of it. He wanted to absorb _all _of it.

On he ran, and the air around him turned sweet and warmer than before. The longer the light existed in the world, the more it took on the properties of normal fire.

Draco could hear his lungs heaving in his chest. He could feel sweat starting on his forehead, and a brief, fleeting thought crossed his mind, about how he would probably appear to Potter, who stood gaping in his place.

But Potter would see worse than that before they were done. He had seen Draco decorated with sweat already when they'd fucked. Draco laughed aloud at the thought that something as simple as that would deter him, and ran faster.

* * *

Harry stared. He knew that, and he couldn't help it. If Malfoy glanced over at him, he would probably think Harry was besotted, and he would laugh the way he was doing now from what sounded like sheer exhilaration, and it would serve Harry right.

But he _couldn't _have closed his jaw. He used the notion to comfort himself as he watched the fire curling like a wave over Malfoy's shoulders, highlighting his pale color and making him appear to flush, so white was his skin.

Malfoy's boots hit the uppermost point of the star, and he whirled around, his head tossed back, his arms wide open to embrace the crashing wave.

The light slammed into him.

Harry didn't know why, but he had expected that light to bear Malfoy off his feet and smash him into the far wall. It didn't, though. It snapped and sang with a noise like a fire's crackling heard from a distance, and then Malfoy was blazing, roseate flames curling down and under his arms, cradling his legs, outlining his hips.

His robes burned away. Harry gasped aloud, but Malfoy, though he turned around to face him, didn't seem hurt. He winked and thrust his hips at Harry, naked and glowing, sexual in a way that made Harry weak with a storm of desire.

"Look at me!" he howled, and the cry that would have seemed childish and stupid in a lot of other circumstances Harry could think of became the only reasonable option when he was _shining _like that. "This is what you can be if you don't fear, if you reach out and grasp the star that's dangling in your hand!"

Harry shook his head, wanting to ask how that could happen for him when his magic would prevent him from doing anything as creative as Malfoy came up with, but Malfoy had turned back to the fire. Most of it had gathered into a single great flame on the floor a few feet from him, between the point of the star and the outer circle.

Malfoy laughed again and hurled himself forwards, straight into the flame.

Harry shouted this time, but the sudden singing of the fire overwhelmed his voice. The flame spread out two branches like arms, as if it were imitating Malfoy, and then whirled and grew, becoming a wall, a bulwark, that stretched along the line of the circle. Harry watched it curve towards him, stupefied. He had no doubt that he could destroy it if it actually threatened him—his magic still moved inside him with more power than he felt in the room—but he was concerned about what had happened to Malfoy.

He didn't have to wait long to find out. A figure stepped out of the fire and walked towards Harry, glowing like glass lit from within. Its smile was lazy, its muscles hard and bright, its stride such a swagger that Harry again felt weak. He braced himself against the wall of the room and shook his head.

"You're mad, Malfoy, you know that?" he asked in a pathetic voice.

Malfoy laughed that laugh again, the one that told Harry part of how they would conquer the world, and drew Harry into a kiss. Harry didn't resist.

* * *

Bathing in the fire of a successfully completed ritual was like nothing else.

And this time, Draco could truthfully say that he'd never had an experience that even compared, because this ritual was more than twice as powerful as the ones that he'd been able to perform alone.

The moment when he fully grasped the power was obscure in his memory, as it needed to be. Draco was not sure that a human brain could stand the sheer drum and flame of that magic. But before and after the blankness, he was caught up in the glory, and he could have flown to the moon on the sheer strength of it.

The expression on Potter's face when he came out for the last time made it all the better. Potter stared at him, openly worshipful, as if he was a god, and reached out a trembling hand that Draco clasped and drew around his back. His lips were not as warm as the fire, but Draco knew he couldn't exist at the height of ecstasy at all times. Carrying stars within his skin made the kiss better.

And that was what he wanted: to be better, stronger, at all times. To soar until he reached the point where the heavens ran out.

He drew back from the kiss with Potter and waited patiently until Potter swallowed and regained his feet and could look at him. Then he smiled. Potter jerked as though someone had stung him.

"That's the way the ritual is supposed to work," Draco said. "That's the way that they will work in the future, once we have mastered the proper way to conduct them—including the ones that will modify your magic."

"If they exist," Potter said, but Draco knew his pessimism was simply reflexive. He was looking at Draco with wide eyes, and his lips were well-kissed, and he kept reaching up as if he needed to adjust his glasses and then remembering they weren't there, so that his hand hovered in front of his face without moving.

"They do," Draco said. "Perhaps not the one you found. That would simply destroy your magic and leave you a Squib." He cocked a challenging eyebrow. He had got part of what he wanted from Potter without any definite attitude change, but to win more, he would have to see one. "Are you content, now, to lose your power completely?"

Potter stood up straight and shook his head. "Not if there's any way that I can retain it," he said. "But there has to be a way."

Draco laughed. "I never thought that you would be the one cautious of making commitments," he said when Potter gave him a curious look. "You seemed more the one to spring into the fire the way I did."

Potter's jaw tightened. "Live under conditions of repression for ten years and see what happens to _you_," he muttered.

Draco nodded, but said, "That's why I want to see you make definite changes. If you rebel against the Wizengamot openly before we are ready, particularly when Gilfleur has access to something like my level of power, you wouldn't demonstrate wisdom, I agree. But what about seeing your friends? Do you have courage enough to do that?"

Potter's eyes were so wide now that Draco felt a bit envious. He hadn't managed to do that even when he took Potter in his arms. "You would _want _me to speak to Ron and Hermione? Why? What if they try to stop us?"

_Us_. Draco had never imagined that he could like hearing a simple word so much. He handed Potter another smile, and Potter half-closed his eyes and turned his head away as if the expression was too bright for him to face.

"That's where Memory Charms come in," Draco said. "Always useful to ensure that certain people who disagree with me have untroubled lives. I don't want to kill them or harm them," he added, when Potter opened his mouth. "I think them essential to your psychological well-being, in fact. But I want to make it clear that they won't be allowed to stand in our way because you have fears for the integrity of their minds. Do you understand?"

Potter nodded shortly. "As long as you're delicate when you use the Memory Charm. I've executed a few people who went mad because the Obliviators had done their work poorly, and the Ministry didn't want anyone to know."

"I have no wish to kill or harm them, as I said," Draco responded quietly. He cocked his head to the side and studied Potter, who managed to keep from shuffling his feet around, with what looked like heavy effort. "Do you still remember the names of the people you executed?" Draco asked abruptly. "And the official reasons why?"

"Of course," Potter snapped. "I remember every person I kill." For a moment, he looked like the haunted hero Draco remembered from Hogwarts.

"Good," Draco breathed. That might be good blackmail material for the Ministry someday. He wondered that Potter had never tried to use it so. He might have improved his position even if he couldn't completely escape from the Wizengamot's control.

Then he reminded himself, again, that Potter had been alone. He seemed to need allies to do anything productive.

_Well, he need not fear that I'll leave him. _Potter had some new form of power to offer every time Draco turned around. He would be a fool to abandon him when he would never find another ally like this again.

He felt a pulse of desire in his groin, and smiled. Though he was not someone to make decisions on the basis of sex alone, he would also be a fool to abandon a lover who could make him feel the way Potter did.

"We can use that," he explained, when Potter gave him a dim, puzzled look.

Potter's mouth opened slowly, and to Draco's relief, it made him look simply startled instead of weak-witted. "Yes, we can," he breathed, and then he turned his head to the side and showed a wicked grin that stunned Draco. "I never thought of that. Why did I never think of that? You're good for me, in more ways than one."

Draco reached out and kissed Potter again, holding him still by main force. Potter didn't show much disposition to stay still, though, squirming against him and pressing close to him with grumbles and grunts and sighs. Draco pulled away panting, and raised an eyebrow. "Do you want to confront your friends tomorrow?"

Potter nodded. His face looked alive again, the shadows of doubt burned away by the future that Draco could offer him. "Yes. I have to get back tonight, or the Wizengamot is going to notice my absence."

That was too true for argument. Draco kissed him regretfully one more time and accompanied him to the front door, finding Potter's constant sidelong glances at his nakedness amusing. If there was no one to notice it except him deep in the dungeons of the Manor, there was no one to notice it in the rest of the house, either. His house-elves were too well-trained to respond to such things.

Draco leaned against the door when Potter had gone, his arms braced, and stroked himself to a second orgasm imagining Potter's face transfigured and lit as his had been with the completion of a successful ritual.


	8. Blast

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—Blast_

Harry couldn't sleep.

He knew that he should. He had had a much longer and more exciting day than he could remember for years, and if Malfoy decided that he should see his friends tomorrow, Harry wanted to be prepared.

But his chest ached with the breaths he drew, and his head spun whenever he tried to fasten his eyes on something small and innocuous. His body didn't appear to agree that he needed sleep, so he finally stood up and moved towards the fireplace, arranging the wood in it and blowing on it when the flames flared sullenly.

_Everything is going to change._

That was the hardest part to think about, Harry thought, while the magic thrummed and hissed against his skin, playing it like an instrument. He had resigned himself to a dreary monotony, a life in which the people he killed or the artifacts he destroyed didn't vary enough to make things different even for a day. All things that would have been different enough to be interesting were forbidden him: contact with other people not on the Wizengamot, learning new spells, hobbies.

_How long is it since I played Quidditch?_

Harry shook his head. It wouldn't have been possible for him to think of or ask that question a short time ago. Malfoy had swept into his life like a devastating storm and altered the relation of everything to everything else.

Thinking about Malfoy, about the way he had looked when eating and the way he had leaped into the fire, Harry was astonished to feel a stirring in his groin. Well, it was true that he had been left aroused and unsatisfied when Malfoy snogged him the second time, but it had been a long time since he'd had any sexual contact, and one orgasm ought to have pacified his libido for the evening. Or so he'd thought.

_I was probably just too depressed to think about sex most of the time._

Harry sat down in the chair that faced the fire, unzipped himself, and began slowly to stroke, letting his mind play like summer lightning over Malfoy's dazzling smiles, his excitement and eagerness when he spoke of dominating the world, the recklessness with which he'd reached out and claimed his prize from the fire. He had become more like Harry, and Harry was becoming more like him. Maybe that was why he was so attractive.

_Think of the way he focused on you as if he really wanted you and not just what you could do for him…_

Harry came with a gasp and a flood of stickiness over his fingers that he felt the need to use an immediate Cleaning Charm on, so strange had the sensation become. Then he leaned back in his chair and frowned at the fire.

_But he doesn't really want me. He still wants what I can do for him. He couldn't perform those rituals alone, and he probably couldn't keep control of the wizarding world alone, either. Are you sure that you aren't depending on him too much? Are you sure that you won't fall in love with him and be left with nothing?_

Harry lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. Those thoughts would have paralyzed him a week ago, and he could imagine how they would make Ron and Hermione react. But he didn't think that he minded all that much if Malfoy was only using him while Harry himself felt something deeper. It wouldn't be the first time. He had really believed in his job for the Wizengamot for the first year or two, until he realized that they saw him only as a weapon with no mind or morals of his own.

He would take his chances. At least Malfoy offered him a change and the chance to survive, and it was worth a risk to satisfy his deepest desires.

* * *

"Malfoy. A word."

"Of course, Risidell," Draco said, turning around and smiling at his sponsor as the older wizard bustled up behind him. His face was calm and helpful, while in his mind he mentally prepared a number of defenses, depending on whether Risidell was about to accuse him of insufficient support or spending too much time with Potter.

Risidell stood in front of him and glanced over his shoulder. Draco continued to wait with a patient smile, but he badly wanted to roll his eyes. _That's one way to make them _notice _what you're doing, even if you can make sure that no one is lurking near. At least learn to look from the corners of your eyes. _

"Rumors have reached my ears that you have had conflicts with both Madam Gilfleur and Mr. Kellerston," Risidell said, facing Draco and still lowering his voice once the last of the other Wizengamot members had passed through the meeting room's doors.

"I knew about the conflict with Kellerston," Draco said, choosing his tactic as he spoke. He couldn't be sure of what Gilfleur would have told Risidell, and therefore, trying to match wits with her in lies wouldn't be intelligent. He strolled over and sat down in the chair he had used during deliberations that day, folding his hands behind his head as he looked up at Risidell. "But Gilfleur? As far as I knew, we'd been getting along well. She'd given me advice, and I'd accepted most of it. If she feels badly because I don't follow all of it, I'm not sure exactly what she would like me to change."

Risidell's mouth crimped. "She reminded me that you are young, and might not understand all the inner workings of the Wizengamot."

"That's true," Draco said, still riding on absolute honesty. "But so far, I haven't had any questions. I promise that I'll ask questions when I have them." He paused and shot Risidell another smile. "Unless there's something I've stumbled over without knowing it. Would you care to tell me about it?"

Risidell studied him for a few minutes. Draco had the feeling that he was used to those who fell down and begged for mercy, but he saw no reason to do so. He waited, letting his smile fade in what would look like a natural manner, but never taking his eyes from Risidell until the man made a sharp noise and turned away in disgust.

"This is the simple truth," he said. "Gilfleur feels that you are too interested in the power of the Wizengamot position and not in governing the wizarding world."

Draco held his laughter back with an effort. Of course that was the closest Gilfleur could come to accusing him of powerful magic without revealing that she had it herself. And of course most of the Wizengamot was there for the power or because it was convenient for someone on the Ministry that they serve, rather than to become good governors.

Gilfleur was a lesser foe than he had thought her, Draco decided as he answered. "I am sorry for giving that impression. Of course I am young yet, and not as learned in wisdom as Madam Gilfleur is. I would like to prove that I'll learn better in time and think more seriously of the great duty I've taken on. For the moment, can you blame me for exulting in the new position I've taken up?"

Risidell studied him narrowly. Draco smiled back. Given Gilfleur's tactics and his own, there was no way that he would admit to knowing what she was truly talking about, the way that Risidell seemed to expect him to do.

"I reckon not," Risidell said at last, his eyes still dwelling on Draco's face. "But you realize that to have complaints made against you in the second week of your service is not a good thing?"

"Of course," Draco said. "But when the complaints come from my inexperience and from an individual who has a mindless grudge against Death Eaters, I don't see how I could have been expected to simply ensure they didn't happen."

"Kellerston remains a valuable member of the Wizengamot," Risidell said, and his voice was a bit softer, "despite what you call a 'mindless grudge.'"

_I'm sure he does, _Draco thought. _All you need to do is convince him that some legislation has a relationship—no matter what—to destroying Death Eaters, and you'll have a guaranteed vote. _He looked vague and apologetic, and gestured with one arm. "I'm sorry for referring to him that way, but you must understand how that grudge looks from the inside. He's had years to collect evidence, and yet he still seems to think that he can find secrets that the Ministry didn't—but he'll also accuse me, crudely, in front of others, as if he could intimidate me into surrendering. His mixture of tactics and lack of political grace make me grieve for him, and perhaps excuse an unintentional sharpness in my replies."

Risidell turned away, but not before Draco got a chance to see his clenched fists. He smiled blandly and stood, following him out the door, wondering if Risidell would speak to him again.

He didn't, and Draco bowed to him and went his way without a return bow. He wondered how detailed the suspicions that Gilfleur had shared with Risidell were. Risidell was in a better position than she was to track visits to Potter and odd goings-on within Ragnarok, since he was the one with the key to the wards.

_I have to be careful. But then, I already knew that._

He was planning to take Potter to visit his friends today, since he'd already sent owls to Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. He suspected his need for caution in that room would be redoubled.

* * *

Harry closed his eyes. He wanted to faint, and he had to brace himself against the wall of the room that Malfoy had taken him into.

He could hear Ron and Hermione's voices, for the first time in a decade, on the other side of the door.

He didn't know how Malfoy had got them to visit the Manor, though he had to agree that it was the only place in wizarding Britain that they wouldn't be spied on by the press. Ron had probably been belligerent about it. Hermione had probably convinced him to come.

_Maybe. _

It came to Harry, when he thought those things and received no immediate confirmation from deep in his mind, that it was a long, _long _time since he had thought for certain that he really knew or understood his friends. They could have changed. Their personalities might not be the same, or their interests, or their lives.

Or their attitude towards him.

Harry suddenly realized that the voices in the other room had stopped. Malfoy had told him to enter when that happened. Hoping that he was still in enough time to prevent Ron from attacking Malfoy, Harry opened the door and stepped in.

Malfoy had brought Ron and Hermione to what Harry thought surely had to be one of the nicest sitting rooms in the Manor, if not the largest. The walls were painted in some sort of soft yellow color that made Harry feel he was standing outside in the sun. The windows showed visions of single large trees with arched branches that were soothing to look at. The walls were lined with bookshelves, the chairs were large and stuffed and brilliant blue in color, and the fireplace looked as if it were made of hand-chosen stones, creamy in color. The only intimidating touch was a large gold-and-crystal clock on the wall. Harry kept his gaze away from that as he stepped in, trying to look only at his friends.

His pale friends, who had both surged to their feet and then dropped back in the chairs as if their legs couldn't hold them.

"_Harry_," Hermione said, and her voice sent a painful pulse of familiarity through Harry's body. At least that much hadn't changed. "Oh, my God."

Ron was trembling. He reached out as if he was going to shake Harry's hand, or hug him, or maybe hit him, and then his hand dropped back again. His mouth opened, but no words came out.

In the silence, Malfoy strolled across the room and wrapped his arm around Harry's shoulders. His walk was a strut, his stance so possessive that Harry couldn't help glaring at him. Malfoy winked and grinned back, then told Ron and Hermione, "You have a lot to catch up on, I know. But the time that Harry can be here is limited, so I would prefer that you not spend half-an-hour limply staring at him."

Hermione surged to her feet and ran forwards. Harry hugged her, shutting his eyes when he felt the firmness of his embrace. That was another thing that hadn't changed, and he swallowed several times so that he wouldn't start sobbing like a baby.

"You don't have any right to touch him, Malfoy," Ron said, in a deeper voice than Harry had known him to use before. When Harry glanced up, though, he had his wand out and trained on Malfoy, and that wasn't new at all. "Get away from him."

Malfoy hesitated, eyes sparking, and Harry thought for certain that he would tell them about becoming lovers. But in the end, he moved away with a graceful inclination of his head and an arch glance at Harry that clearly said, _I'm doing this for you, not for them._

Harry hugged them both—Ron came up to join Hermione after that—and was unable to think of anything to say for what felt like a long time but was probably only five minutes. Hermione kept mumbling into his ear, but too softly for Harry to make out what she was saying. Ron swore, words that Harry would have been sure he didn't know, and then he'd stop, shake his head, and start swearing again.

"I need to tell you what's been happening," Harry said finally, when he decided that Malfoy would start clearing his throat if they went on much longer. "I didn't move to Australia, and you probably won't like the story or the end of it, but you need to know."

"Of course," Hermione said softly, still holding him. She walked backwards towards her chair, and Harry had to come along perforce. In the end, though, she let him go long enough that he could sit on the arm of the chair rather than in her lap. Her eyes were huge and luminous as she lifted them to his face. "What—oh, Harry, what _happened_?"

"I want to know the same bloody thing," Ron said, taking his chair. Then he seemed to decide that was too far from Harry and Hermione, and dragged the chair across the carpet towards them with several thumps. "What _happened_?"

Harry cleared his throat, remembering that he would have to tell them about the original ritual and his accidental murders of the Aurors as well as everything else, and began to speak.

* * *

Draco lounged against the far wall, seemingly paying as much attention to the book he held as to the conversation between Potter and his friends. He didn't expect Potter to forget his presence as it seemed Weasley and Granger had, but he wanted to hear an honest speech, an honest story, and that was what it sounded as if he were getting.

He was amazed, as he listened to Potter, how well simple words could wear the guilt Potter felt. He didn't use fancy descriptions; he didn't appear capable, as Draco was, of making someone feel present at a ritual with speech alone. But he paused in between his sentences, and frequently lowered his eyes, and moved his hands back and forth as if playing with invisible rocks, and between that and the words themselves Draco knew the guilt.

Weasley's face went white and red alternately as he listened. Granger clung to Potter's hand with an expression that said she was dying to interrupt but thought it wouldn't be the best course right now. Draco wondered if she sensed, as he did, that Potter might not ever tell the story again if he was interrupted as he spoke.

Potter reached the part where he had labored for ten years under the Wizengamot and replied to their post with excuses. Weasley's face went red again all the way to his hairline, and this time he did interrupt.

"How could you do that to us, mate?" he whispered, with an expression like a tragedy. "How could you _lie _all those years? We would have helped you. We would have found you some place where you could die in peace."

Draco tightened his hands on the book, but decided that speaking up now would be counterproductive. It said much that all Weasley could think of doing about Potter's magic was giving him a peaceful death. And he probably couldn't read at all the ambiguous glance Potter cast him. Of course, he wouldn't know that his former best friend wanted to survive above all else, that dying with dignity wasn't enough.

_I hope, at least._

But Draco dismissed the thought with a small twist of his head. No, he was confident of his analysis, that Potter's greatest desire was survival and therefore he would not turn his back on it now to walk away with Weasley and Granger. Draco knew that he couldn't trust in his own charms to hold Potter when their true acquaintance was so recent, but desires and wishes that ran that deep were sure allies.

"I was guilty," Potter said in response to his friend's question. "I wasn't sure how you would respond when you found out that I'd murdered people. I didn't want to—to put you in a false position. And I was afraid of what the Wizengamot might do to you, and to me." He winced and sighed. "You wouldn't believe how many times I've asked myself whether this was the right decision, but as time passed and the lies piled up, it was easier simply to let it go on."

"But for so long?" Granger was looking at Potter with melting eyes, but Draco had seen people with melting eyes like those before, and they inevitably revealed the steel behind the glaze when the person was pressed hard enough. "Couldn't you have discovered some solution before this?"

"How?" Potter asked simply. "I had no one who would support me, and I thought that you would probably hate me if you ever found out the truth." He sighed and swiped a hand through his hair. "And that's where Malfoy came in. He was the one who gave me the courage to approach you, and he was the one who set up this meeting."

Draco lowered his book and stepped forwards as Granger and Weasley pivoted around to stare at him. "That's right," he said smoothly. "I would appreciate it if you both told me what you think of Potter's career now, and the fact that he's finally ready to emerge from hiding. Disagreeing with his decisions is one thing, but if you're going to fight us, then I need to know."

"Why would we fight you?" Weasley was glancing back and forth between the both of them, alert, as befit someone who worked as an Auror. "Unless you mean to play the Dark Lord and take over the wizarding world…"

Potter jerked too hard at the conclusion of that sentence for even Weasley to miss. As he turned around and stared with wide eyes, Draco inclined his head and murmured, "Yes, something like that. Though I resent being compared to a Dark Lord. I require neither masks nor a stupid name for my followers. In fact, having people know and fear my face strikes me as a rather good tactic."

"Harry?" Granger's voice was small and frightened. "You can't—you realize that you can't really agree with this, right?"

Potter took a deep breath. "The Wizengamot is the most powerful political body in the wizarding world right now, Hermione," he said, with more calm and more insight than Draco had expected. "They would try to stop me once they found out I was planning on breaking free. You can't fight them through the legal system. They _make _the laws. And they tried everything they could to keep me away from you and keep me a depressed prisoner for ten years. It would be a war no matter what. Malfoy's price for helping me fight that war is that I help him gain power. And my magic is only suited for destruction, unless I manage to make changes that, frankly, may not be possible. Yes, I think that gaining power of my own and fighting at Malfoy's side is the only thing for me to do."

"You only have to tell the truth, and people will help you!" Granger sprang to her feet. Draco wondered idly if her head ever hurt from the crown of self-righteousness she wore. "I promise, Harry! When you come forwards and tell the tale, then the Wizengamot will begin to fall—"

"No, it won't," Draco said quietly. "I agree, if this had happened ten years ago, then that might be feasible. But _now_? Why don't you tell Potter what his reputation is like in the outside world, Granger?"

Granger fell silent and glared at him. Potter tilted his head. "Let me guess," he said, in a heavy, ironic tone that Draco hadn't known he was capable of using. "I'm seen as a coward who ran away and no longer matters. Or at least someone who isn't relevant."

"I—yeah, that's closer to right," Weasley said quietly, and then avoided Granger's astonished gaze. "But Harry—we can help you change your magic. You don't have to rely on Malfoy. Fuck, why _would _you?"

Potter hesitated, and Draco raised his eyebrows as that wandering gaze came to his face. He hadn't thought to counter this particular tactic in his own conversations with Potter earlier, but why should that matter? Either Potter would choose him or he wouldn't, and either Draco would be able to change his mind if Potter chose against him or he wouldn't.

* * *

Harry wanted to believe in what Ron was saying. It would have been wonderful to join with his friends again, one last adventure to solve the biggest problem. He could imagine working with Hermione, their heads together over books, and Ron drinking beer with him in a pub and condoling with him on the false attempts.

And then his mind simply slammed into a blank wall, because he couldn't imagine that he would get away with working with his best friends for long before the Wizengamot learned about it.

And what would happen to his friends then?

Harry shook his head slowly. "This isn't something I would have chosen on my own," he said, "but the thing that has the best chance of working. Malfoy is a Wizengamot member and can meet with me without arousing suspicion, or at least not too much. Besides, the rituals require two powerful people to perform them, and I don't think either of you would qualify."

"Harry," Hermione whispered. "You could plunge the wizarding world into war again. Think about that."

"It won't happen," Malfoy said, giving her a charming smile. "I promise that I have no desire to destroy my latest conquest."

Hermione ignored him so thoroughly that Harry found himself impressed. She wouldn't take her eyes from him, and she wouldn't give up, it seemed, the power to compel by her gaze alone. "Harry," she repeated.

Harry took a deep breath. He would have liked to say yes to Hermione and turn his back on Malfoy.

_No, you wouldn't. The Auror you used to be would, the _boy_ you used to be would, but not you._

Harry nodded slowly. Yes, he was the one who wanted conquest and power, who wanted freedom to act without the Wizengamot looking over his shoulder, and the one who had discovered that he liked giving orders and having Malfoy for a lover.

Besides, even if his friends weren't aware of it, he could feel the ten years standing between them like a wall. It would take a lot more for them to recover their friendship than just one meeting, and even if Ron and Hermione were willing to pretend that everything was the same, Harry wasn't.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm going to work with Malfoy."

Ron whipped his wand up. Harry stepped back, not sure what to do. He didn't want to unleash his destructive magic on his best friend, but he couldn't defend himself otherwise.

Malfoy whispered something, and both Hermione and Ron slumped down, eyes shut and heads hanging as if they were hypnotized. Harry blinked at him.

"I thought that might happen," Malfoy said calmly. "We should discuss adequate precautions, whether a geas not to speak of these matters would suffice, or whether we should modify their memories. I'm willing to follow your recommendation and even conduct a ritual, if you think that would do less damage to them."

Harry swallowed. "All right," he said. "We'll be careful."

He had made the decision, and he could feel the last scraps of the person he had once been—Harry Potter, Auror, friend of Ron and Hermione, hero of the wizarding world—dry up and blow away like ashes.


	9. Jab

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nine—Jab_

"How are we going to modify their memories?"

Draco blinked in pleasure, though he doubted that Potter could read the signals. Potter was sitting on a couch in front of his two friends, studying them with darkened eyes. Now and then a flick of magic, colored scarlet or gold, crept down his arm or through his fingers. It always faded again, and so far Draco had seen no scorch marks on the material of the couch. He saw no need to scold Potter until he did.

"We're going to use a combination of lies and truth that we should prepare beforehand, so that we can feed it into their ears while they're still groggy and suggestible from the _Obliviate_," Draco said. "Did you know that that period, the period when someone will listen to you and implicitly believe everything you say, is much shorter than generally acknowledged? I know any amount of people who have been caught because they believe that they can babble on for half-an-hour and still fool someone whose wits have returned long since."

Potter nodded, but not as if interested in that incredible statistic. "We'll have to tell them about my magic, I reckon. That's something that will probably return to them anyway when they see us go public if we don't."

Draco tilted his head in respect this time. "That's not something many people know."

Potter gave him a brief smile without humor. "You forget that I've had to execute victims of the Obliviators who had poor training or were in haste. The Memory Charms, when they don't apply them properly, slice up the mind. People have different memories at different times, and if something reminds them of one, it tends to show up no matter how deeply the magic should have buried it. Ron and Hermione might suddenly remember the whole conversation when they see me if we're not careful."

"I would never apply Memory Charms improperly," Draco said.

Potter ignored the dangerous tone in his voice. "I know that. But sometimes the charms work like that with the best degree of skill in the world. And someone like Hermione, who makes every effort just to find a _word _that she can't remember, is particularly prone to suddenly having the memories you thought she'd suppress."

Draco nodded slowly back. He reckoned that he should listen to Potter if he was going to have his help. "Very well. They have to know about your magic. That will be the reason that you avoided contacting them for this long. Should they know about your imprisonment by the Wizengamot?"

Potter stared at him. "You're leaving that element of the decision up to _me_?" he muttered. "How generous."

Draco shook his head in irritation. "You're the one who knows your friends. Would they accept that with the same dreamy belief that we need them to accept everything else, or would they simply reject it or use it as the basis for more investigation?"

Potter grimaced as though he'd swallowed a piece of rotten meat. "Use it as the basis for more investigations, almost certainly. Ron really took to the Auror training that tells you to memorize and check into anything suspicious. And I think Hermione was born that way. We'll leave the idea of my avoiding them up to my guilt. After all, if we're going to leave them the memory of my having changed my magic with the ritual, we can leave them the memory of my killing those Aurors."

He looked so pained about it that Draco stood up and moved across the room to him. "You have a strange sense of guilt, Potter," he murmured. "Here we are, ready to take over the wizarding world, and those deaths still bother you? It's not as though you knew what you were doing or could control your magic."

Potter was silent for some time, eyelashes fanned across his cheeks, though now and then Draco caught a glitter of green from beneath his eyelids. Then he took a quick breath and said, "This is going to sound strange, but I think of my life as divided into two parts. Before the ritual, I was one of the most moralistic people you could find, and so I still feel guilt about the deaths I caused then. But living under the Wizengamot killed something in me. I can do things _now _that the old me would have felt guilty about. But the old memories continue to live in me." He lifted his head. "Does that make sense?"

Draco bent and kissed him, tongue leisurely exploring Potter's mouth, hand tightening on the back of his neck. Potter resisted after a moment, so that Draco couldn't force him back and pin him against the couch as he would have liked to. Potter's tongue was darting out, his eyes brilliant with lust and anger, and he surged up against Draco's restraint, taking control of the kiss.

Draco laughed into his mouth, and Potter pulled back, partly offended, though with the way his gaze kept returning to Draco's lips, Draco thought the anger was cut through with other emotions.

"Listen to me," Draco said. "I won't give you validation for your guilt. I can understand what you mean, and I can offer you power and pleasure, but my faculty for sympathy has declined through lack of use. If you work with me, then you'll have to be the person you became under the Wizengamot, and live as that person for the rest of your life."

Potter was silent and meditative. Then he said, "I'm afraid."

"Of what?" Draco demanded incredulously. "You have the power to destroy anyone who criticizes you, to turn them into less than ashes." He still burned hot with envy for that particular power, he had to admit. Simply performing the rituals wouldn't grant it to him, since the disastrous ritual had made a change in the nature of Potter's magic itself.

"But I need the criticism," Potter said. "Or I thought I did. Or I'm only slowly growing used to the notion that I don't. I don't know." He had a bright, peculiar smile on his face, and he was touching his brow as though a headache was coming on.

Draco had offered understanding, but he was not sure that he understood this particular problem. "You've left the need for criticism behind now?" he hazarded. "You think that you're leaving your conscience behind?"

"I felt that die when I agreed to modify Ron and Hermione's memories," Potter said impatiently, as though Draco should have been in his head and known that. "But yeah. I feel frightened to go without the criticism, but I won't turn back now."

Draco decided that was good enough, and kissed Potter again. Potter twisted beneath the kiss like a serpent, doing his best to bring his tongue into play, his eyes hotly gleaming.

Draco would have liked to have him on the floor, but they had the Memory Charms to apply. After a few more questions to Potter to make the story straight in his head, he raised his wand and released Granger and Weasley from the hypnosis charm that had so far kept them motionless.

As they blinked and looked up, he whispered, "_Obliviate._"

His strength was great enough that the single spell hit both of them, and their jaws dropped open and their faces softened. Draco waited precisely three heartbeats after that happened—research had been done that showed the most powerful part of the suggestible period didn't begin until then—and then he murmured, "You met Potter today after ten years of silence. He explained the ritual that corrupted his magic, making it more powerful but only destructive, and how he avoided you because of the guilt he felt over killing Aurors when his magic ran free. It's guilt that leads him to avoid you now."

Three sentences, packed with information, the kind they could handle. Draco paused and watched their faces twitch and bound until they had absorbed the information and looked as if they would think that was reality from now on. Draco nodded in satisfaction. It was true that he had left out a few of the details, such as why and how they had met Potter, but he had found it was best to leave holes. The mind would fill them in later and make the false memories seem stronger.

He Stunned Weasley and Granger just when they reached the point where they might have been able to ask questions, and then turned to Potter as their bodies slumped over each other. "We'll be returning them to their homes?"

"Yes," Potter said. He was staring wistfully at his friends, and Draco could see the flicker in the back of his eyes where he, possibly, wanted things to be different.

But the flicker burned out, and Draco was satisfied by the determination that took its place, though it was a bit too self-consciously cold, as if Potter was acting the way he had heard ruthless people should act rather than because he felt ruthless himself.

They were committed now.

* * *

Harry was asleep when the summons came.

A loud iron bell clanged right beside his head, and Harry sat up immediately, obedient to that sound although it seemed a long time since he'd last heard it. The door to his room was already opening, and he blinked and started pulling on his trousers; he usually slept in his pants and shirt.

"Mr. Potter?" Madam Gilfleur's voice was tight and throbbed at the edges, as though she was on the verge of a heart attack.

Harry swallowed. _This is about Malfoy. And we're not prepared. _The only other strategy he and Malfoy had agreed on tonight was to perform a ritual tomorrow—that was, later today. They wouldn't rebel yet, not until they could be sure that they had a chance of winning against the Wizengamot.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and sat up, trying his best to smooth the tangles out of his hair and the wrinkles out of his shirt. But when Gilfleur came pounding across the floor and into the light of the fireplace, Harry decided she probably wasn't going to notice such things anyway.

Her hair was fuzzy with magic, sparks popping and flaring out before they hit the floor. She wore not the elegant robes he had seen her in a few days ago, but brilliant red-gold ones that were thinner than normal. Harry thought she must have gone to sleep in them and not bothered to change them before she sent the summons. Her eyes had a kind of frantic anger in them, and Harry decided again that this was about Malfoy.

"Ma'am?" he repeated gently when she halted in front of him and stared, keeping his feelings under iron control.

Gilfleur latched onto the title and waved her wand, transforming her thin robes into more standard ones. Harry felt his nostrils flare as the rush of magic swept past him. It was more powerful than it should have been, with an edge that he had felt only twice before. He smiled grimly. She _was _another user of the rituals.

"Listen to me," Gilfleur said. "It is important that you understand every word I am about to say and take them extremely seriously. There is a threat to the wizarding world's safety that depends on your immediate cooperation."

"Yes, ma'am," Harry said. Those were two of the four most useful words ever invented, he thought, the other ones being, "Yes, sir." It sounded as though you were swearing obedience when you were really just acknowledging that you heard someone else. He thought of trying for an encouraging smile and decided against it. Gilfleur might calm down and think that was suspicious.

"I thought we had more time before we must deal with this," said Gilfleur, apparently to herself. "But I should have known better."

"Ma'am?" Harry made sure that he seemed as alert, courteous, and deadly as possible, considering that he was still sitting in bed with bare feet and hair that probably looked like it had been through a war.

Gilfleur pulled herself back together with a visible jerk and took a breath that seemed to vibrate through her body. "I need you to execute someone," she said. "You will need to destroy powerful wards to reach him and make sure that you don't alert anyone else. His house is not near any Muggles', luckily, so you won't have to shield against their notice."

_Keep your face still, _Harry snapped to himself, and hoped that he really was. He had never been as good at controlling his expressions and emotions as Malfoy seemed to think he should be. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "What's the name?"

"Draco Malfoy."

_It's coming. It's here. The only question now is whether I pretend to go along with her crazy plan and then go and warn Malfoy so we can figure out what to do next, or whether I make sure that she doesn't get the chance to propose something like this again. _Harry knew the Wizengamot had other enforcers, though not ones as deadly as him, and Gilfleur might have decided to send extra people against Malfoy since, from what he had said, she was aware of his extra magic.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and gave up the option of an immediate kill. He simply didn't know enough. Maybe other people on the Wizengamot wanted Malfoy dead, too, and would be suspicious if Gilfleur didn't reappear. "Give me time to get dressed, and I'll go."

Gilfleur's fear, and the dulling of her senses and mind by her fear, seemed to have worn off. She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head. "What…" she began, but answered her own question before she got that far. "Why do you not need directions to Malfoy Manor?"

Harry gave her a wide smile. "I was there during the war, ma'am. Bellatrix Lestrange tortured one of my best friends there, and another friend, a house-elf who helped us, died in the escape. I'm not likely to forget."

"Ah." The cloud on Gilfleur's brow eased. "Of course." Then it bent down again. "But you should need directions in how to destroy wards."

"I've done that plenty of times, ma'am," Harry said, still smiling, and hoping that the edge he _thought _was creeping into his tone really wasn't. "And as powerful as I remember the wards on Malfoy Manor being during the war, I haven't found anything yet that can stand up to my magic." He extended a hand in demonstration, although he didn't lift it high enough for her to feel threatened, and destroyed part of the mantle above the fireplace. So close was he and so precisely focused was his magic that the mantle simply blinked into nonexistence, rather than going through a cloud of dust or ashes first.

Gilfleur nodded, but she left the room with several suspicious glances backwards. Harry stayed sitting in the bed until she was gone. He wasn't going to rise to his feet in front of this woman when he had no trousers on.

He paused in surprise when he realized that, though. A few weeks ago, he wouldn't have cared. What did he have to be modest about? With no lover in ten years and with employers who thought of him as a thing, not a human being, he probably could have danced naked through the room without a concern about who was in it.

_But I have a lover now. _

Harry offered another grim smile up to the empty air of the room and the force of his own thoughts, and then rose to dress.

* * *

A tremble of magic, a wedge driven through his wards, woke Draco in a hurry. He had prepared emergency measures for what might happen if one of his enemies attacked long ago. He only had to flick his wand once to dress himself and then reach his hand out to clasp the enchanted knife on the bedside table.

As his hand came to rest on the hilt, however, he tasted a familiar flavor to the magic and narrowed his eyes. _Who could have convinced Potter to change his allegiance to them in a single evening?_

Potter appeared in his bedroom a short time later. Draco saw no reason to move, although he had undressed himself with another flick of his wand. Nakedness could be advantageous with this particular foe, and the knife would be in reach if he could not persuade Potter otherwise.

"I'm sorry I had to do that to your wards," Potter said, which rather put paid to the idea of his having changed loyalties. Draco smiled and took his hand off the knife. Potter's eyes followed the movement, but he didn't ask for reasons. "But I had to convince anyone watching from the Wizengamot that I had actually destroyed them, and that I was coming here to destroy you."

Draco nodded. "Gilfleur came to you and requested a formal execution?"

"Yes. And she was suspicious as to why I didn't need directions to the Manor or instructions on how to burst through your wards. The disruption of the wards is for her." Potter tilted his head to the side, eyes so wild that Draco almost felt the need to rise from the bed and calm him. But Potter would be of no use to him without some elementary self-control, so he stayed still. "What do you want to do?"

Draco closed his eyes and thought. He was in no position to begin the rebellion at this moment; he needed more rituals performed to heighten his magic, and Potter needed, at the very least, a ritual to give him more restraint. They could, perhaps, perform those tonight, but they would be rushed and hasty, and Potter was a living example of what could happen when a ritual went wrong because of a mistake—and lucky to be a living one, at that. No, there was no way it could be done.

The best solution was to lean on what he knew of the precautions Gilfleur had taken to conceal her magic, and, with it, doubtless the source of her enmity to him. Without revealing her heightened power, she had only weak excuses to offer Risidell, such as Draco enjoying his new position too much or his feud with Kellerston. That meant Risidell and other Wizengamot members were unlikely to have agreed that Potter should kill Draco.

"We turn her trap back on her," he murmured. "We kill her. Tonight."

Potter's silence made Draco open his eyes. Potter was staring at him, body so still that Draco felt the stillness as a painful lump in his own belly. Then Potter's eyes melted back into some of their brilliance and wildness, and Draco could breathe more easily. He frowned, wondering if that stillness was a mark of the weapon the Wizengamot had tried to make Potter into. He already knew that he would do a great deal not to have to see it again.

"So you want me to act as executioner," Potter said. "As I did for them."

"You need a course in grammar," Draco snapped, and slid fluidly from under the sheets of the bed. Potter's eyes widened. Draco turned his back deliberately and conjured pants and robes that would cover him. He saw no need to wear more than that on such a short expedition. "Pronouns are important. I said _we_ are going to kill her."

"Oh," Potter said.

Draco shook his head and refused to turn around until he was completely dressed and had smoothed the wrinkles out of his robes. Then he smiled at Potter, and didn't care it was the kind of smile Potter knew well enough to flinch from. "What? Did you think that I would let you go alone? That I would use you as they did?"

Potter gave him a look as sarcastic as his smile. "I think you're certainly _capable _of it."

"Ah," Draco said. "But I want you as an ally. Using you as a weapon would hurt that aspect of our relationship."

Potter muttered something that Draco couldn't hear clearly, and gave him a dubious look. "Do you think we can kill her tonight? She may be prepared if I return too early—or what she thinks is too early—and if she sensed your magic when you didn't mean her to. She might feel us coming."

"I think we can," Draco said, and reached out to put a hand on Potter's arm, calling his magic up as he had done other times. Potter's eyes became those of a lazy cat who had seen a mouse dart across the floor once too often. Draco smiled and flexed his fingers, sending individual jabs of magic like lightning deep into Potter's veins. It was a trick he had used on one lover previously, but that man hadn't had anything like Potter's power or sensitivity to power. These results should be entertaining.

Potter gasped, his lovely eyes opening wide enough to satisfy Draco's deepest dreams of drowning in that green, and then shutting again. A low sound made its way out of his throat. Draco didn't know whether it was a growl, a purr, or something fiercer than either. Potter leaned nearer and fastened his teeth in the shoulder that Draco's robes left exposed.

Draco had to shut his eyes. The rush he felt from feeling those teeth lock home was hard enough to _make _him hard, the blood surging, dancing, rearing up in a cascade of sparks and then falling like colored rain over his head.

"Do that again," he whispered, "and we won't make it out of here."

Potter stepped back. Draco opened his eyes in disbelief, and found the bastard _smirking _at him.

"Well, I wouldn't want to do that," Potter said. "Since we _do _have a Wizengamot member to kill and all."

And he turned, and walked away with his smugness trailing behind him like a banner.

Draco decided that the most effective way to get what he wanted was simply to pick his jaw up and follow. The sooner Gilfleur was dead, the sooner he could go to bed with Potter.


	10. Rush

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Ten—Rush_

For a few moments as they prepared to Apparate, Harry felt as if he were walking in a dream. He was doing anything, _anything_, rather than actually preparing to murder a Wizengamot member. He had served them for so long, and other than moments when the magic had swirled within him and he had longed to release it any way he could, he had never seriously thought about killing the ones who called themselves his masters. Why should he? They would know what had happened and hunt him down.

Of course, that should have told him something right there, he thought. If he only wanted to die to escape the magic's torment, then why not relieve his feelings and let them kill him? Even then, his strongest desire had been to survive. The problem was that he couldn't acknowledge it, and that made him ignore the indicators that would have told him otherwise.

But now he was going.

_As long as I don't _act _as though I'm in a dream, _he decided, and felt them leap through darkness as Malfoy Apparated them, _it's probably going to be all right. And we can decide what we're going to do when Gilfleur is dead._

* * *

Draco stood outside the building that held the Wizengamot's quarters and studied Potter critically. His eyes were brighter and bigger than they should have been, his breathing faster, and he looked at the building as though he had never seen it before.

Of course, he noticed that Draco was observing him, though not fast enough to reassure Draco. He twisted his head and frowned at him. "What is it? What's the matter?"

"I want to know if the Wizengamot's training of you is going to be a problem," Draco said bluntly. "They might have conditioned you to such an extent that you can't strike against them, if they didn't simply put a spell on you that would make it impossible for you to rebel. That's what I would have done."

Potter bristled. "If they had done that, then why didn't it force me away from the path of rebellion already? I've done lots of things with you that they wouldn't have wanted me to do."

_Yes, and sex not the least transgressive, _Draco thought. He would have considered it, at least, if he had been on the Wizengamot when Potter first became Ragnarok, and he could not believe that all of them were fools without any psychological insight. They had to know that it would be easier to control Potter if they isolated him and kept him from forming any bonds or attachments. That way, they could also manipulate him with ease. Draco had seen the way Potter looked and acted when he thought no one in the world valued him or would help him. He wasn't fit to stand alone.

On the other hand, he was right that any spell meant to prevent rebellion should have acted before now. Why wait? The Wizengamot might consider that nothing except an attempt to actually rise against them was worthy of the spell acting—the first thought Draco had had—but Gilfleur and Risidell at least would have been careful enough to see otherwise, and Risidell was the one who had the most direct charge of Potter.

"Come with me, then," he said softly, and once again called his magic as he laid his hand on Potter's arm. Potter's eyelids drooped deliciously for a moment, and then he unexpectedly stepped away and shook his head angrily.

"You don't need to manipulate me, too," he whispered. "I'll come along. You don't need to worry about that."

Draco laughed in spite of himself, though quietly, so that he wouldn't warn any eager watcher they were there. "I wasn't trying to manipulate you," he explained when Potter glared at him. "I was trying to seduce you."

Potter gaped at him, and Draco rolled his eyes. "Did you really think anything else of me by now?" he asked. "Are you about to have a moral crisis because I didn't approach you in honesty from the beginning?"

"It was enough honesty from the beginning," Potter said, and swallowed, and then gave an awkward laugh. "I just—it didn't occur to me that that was what you might want. It didn't occur to me that I was seducible."

"The next time we're alone, then I'll show you exactly what I think on that subject," Draco promised.

Potter shut his eyes and swayed a little, putting out a hand as though he would catch himself on an invisible wall. When nothing appeared beneath his hand, he popped his eyes back open and gave Draco a sickly smile. "All right."

"Good," Draco said, and looked back at the building in front of them, large, impressive, dark, and silent. "Now, let's kill her."

* * *

The moment remained dream-like for Harry even when they stepped back into his warded room—Draco had said the killing should take place there, because the wards would keep most of the Wizengamot from feeling the collision of powerful magic—and saw Gilfleur waiting in Harry's chair beside the fire. Yes, he understood that this wasn't the best state of mind to be in, but he was still struggling with the notion that Malfoy might want to seduce him rather than simply make a bargain with him or twist him to his own ends. The word _seduce _implied, well, all sorts of possibilities that Harry had sometimes dreamed of or hoped for and never taken seriously even when he found himself sleeping with Malfoy.

Possibilities that he had to dismiss from his mind when he saw Gilfleur rising hastily to her feet with moist eyes.

"You succeeded," she said. "You would not have come back if you did not succeed. I wondered. Given that Malfoy is—was—formidable—"

And then she broke off and gave him a sick look when she saw the man who walked by his side. That was what undid her, Harry thought later, the sick look. She would have done much better in the ensuing battle if she hadn't hesitated, but simply understood the situation from a glance and struck.

"You've betrayed me," she whispered. "I let you have as much assistance as you liked, and you served us, and you betrayed us."

Harry would have asked who he was supposed to be betraying, exactly, her or the whole Wizengamot, but she turned and cast a spell at Malfoy, as if she assumed that Harry would simply stand back and let that happen.

Harry held out his hand, told his magic, _I want nothing of her left, _and let it go.

His magic surged out in a crackling cloud of energy—and rammed into a barrier, for the first time since the ritual that had changed Harry. He reeled back, gasping. The barrier dissolved in instants, but Harry was still caught in the current of his turning power and couldn't respond the way he probably should have.

Malfoy was already in front of him, casting spells that Harry could barely see or comprehend because of their swiftness, all of which seemed to run into the same invisible wall that his magic had. Harry swallowed as the cloud dissipated back into his body, saw Gilfleur's intense face and faint smile, and finally understood. He hadn't battled someone before who had enhanced their power with one of those rituals. Gilfleur might not be able to resist every strike he could throw, but she could defend herself.

And Malfoy was probably only equal to her in power, not substantially stronger, or he would have overcome her in the first moments. Harry had to figure out some other way to help in this battle.

He dropped back with a frown and began to circle, thinking. If she was defended against brute force, then what else could he do? That was the only weapon he had to offer, the only thing that made him frightening in the first place.

Then another answer came to him, one that focused on the image of a dissolving telescope in the attics at Grimmauld Place.

Harry smiled, and began to focus.

* * *

Draco felt a flash of intense regret as Gilfleur dismissed and dodged and outfaced his spells. If he had known of her existence before now, he could have had someone to practice with, someone who would let him test his powers more fully than he could against Potter, whose magic was—for now—so different.

But he could not have enjoyed the other pleasures with her that he had enjoyed with Potter: the seduction, the dancing, the intense cooperation for the goal of getting more power. He was sure that Gilfleur would have become uneasy as Draco grew stronger and plotted to destroy him. It had been her first reaction when she saw that he had more than the usual amount of magic, after all.

But he still mourned the opportunity missed, because she had been through different rituals than he had. The defenses against his magic, which he could not see or anticipate and could only feel by the way that his magic turned around and came back to him, were masterly. She had not learned them on her own, Draco was certain. The rituals had adapted and changed her spells, and she had adapted and changed them in turn as she learned how they functioned.

She was smarter than he had thought, and if she could not drive him back because of her offensive spells, at least Draco thirsted for the knowledge she had used to make herself a master of shields and walls.

Gilfleur spoke when they had danced in silence—well, silence except for the grunts of intense effort—around each other for several moments. "You will not win," she said. Her lips were set in a thin smile. "I have let others know what I intended to do. Kill me and you bring the entire Wizengamot down on you."

Draco didn't see that this was worth responding to. He was trying to find a hole in her walls, and he wouldn't find it if he wasted time on irrelevant speeches. Perhaps Gilfleur had joined the Wizengamot because she liked irrelevant speeches, though he had interacted with her for too short a time to see signs of it.

"And Potter will die," she whispered. "There are ways to kill even an abomination like him, and we have found them."

Draco wondered why she would say such things when Potter was still in the room, but then decided that it probably had to do with the common Wizengamot attitude that Potter was incapable of rebellion because he didn't have a mind of his own. Well, if she wanted to forget, he wasn't about to remind her. He chose another spell that he thought might make her jump, and touched her heart the same way he had touched Kellerston's.

Her shield turned it aside again, but this time, Draco knew he had felt the spell sink further into her flesh. Her internal shields were not as good as her external ones. It was a weakness, and she saw that he knew it as one, because her eyes grew wary and she backed away from him, still circling, still watching intently for some way to trip him up.

Potter attacked from the side.

Draco caught a glimpse of his squinting eyes and set jaw, and a collection of flames—with no color that Draco had ever seen before, and which he couldn't remember no matter how much he tried to think of it later—were suddenly dancing in front of Gilfleur. She stepped adeptly backwards, but the flames extended long fingers and curled them around her ankles, tugging her forwards. She pitched to the floor, screaming loudly enough that Draco flinched before he remembered that she had wanted to kill him and therefore deserved no compromise and no sympathy.

He stepped closer, craning his neck so that he could at least have a good view of how Potter appeared to be killing her. He would remember this technique in case he wanted to use it on someone in the future.

The flames were doing no damage that he could see, oddly, other than sticking into Gilfleur's skin like splinters or thorns. But her eyes were wide with desperation, and every time she started to raise her power, which Draco could feel as a trembling, quivering flood of silvery pressure, it collapsed again.

Draco suddenly understood, and didn't bother concealing his laughter. He didn't think it would distract Potter, and Gilfleur could hear it as she died and do nothing to interfere. Potter had somehow figured out a way to use his magic to destroy her own. The flames were simply the form that it took, probably because Potter had used fire and other traditional sources of destruction for so long that he couldn't envision the magic simply being consumed. And it made it more terrifying for Gilfleur, perhaps, to see the flames and know that she _should _have been able to resist them.

Draco turned to Potter. His jaw was still set, but his eyes were distant now, with an expression in them as if he was listening to calming music. When he focused on Draco and Gilfleur again, it was to cock his head and give a disarming smile. Perhaps he feared that Draco would scold him for some reason.

Draco smiled back instead, and let the smile widen into the lascivious one he had been suppressing since the moment he first understood what Potter had done. Potter jerked a little, as though it had never occurred to him that someone could find his magic exciting, but he recovered in good time and smiled back.

Gilfleur cried out. It was a sound of panic and pain, but of loss more profound than either. Draco understood. If he had suddenly realized that he was losing all the magic he had worked so hard to retain, then he would have cried out, too. He turned around and leaned in interest against the nearby wall, watching as Gilfleur began to die.

The flames were fading out, flickering now and then with pulses of green and rose along their strange color, snapping back into view for a moment, and then flickering again. Draco could see through them. He looked at Gilfleur and realized with a shock that he could see through _her_, too.

Potter was turning her into magic, Draco thought a moment later. That was the only possible explanation. The flames were eating Gilfleur as well as the magic that poured out of her, and destroying it.

Draco opened his mouth to ask if Potter could possibly compel his magic to transfer some of her power to Draco, and then shut it again. No, Potter had already said that his power could only destroy, and Draco would look stupid if he asked the question again. He would simply relax, accept matters, and continue to watch the fascinating way in which Gilfleur would likely die.

Gilfleur's wail began to grow softer, not because she had stopped screaming but because she was losing substance to her mouth, as Draco saw when he looked. The color of her lips was gone, and she might have been one of Hogwarts's ghosts on a particularly bad day. Her hair was ashen, not because it had suddenly turned grey but because that was the way it had to be. She closed her eyes at the last moment, as if the sight of herself dissolving was worse than anything else. Draco could see why it might be.

Draco glanced at Potter and saw that he avoided watching the flames, his mouth curled in disgust. Draco shrugged. Whether Potter didn't like the effects his power was having or simply didn't want to watch someone else killed, it was up to him whether he wanted to look or not. Draco didn't see anything noble watching an enemy die. They were still going, either way, and the old notion that someone should "look you in the eye as they stick the sword through you" did nothing but comfort the killer.

Besides, as far as Draco was concerned, Potter had earned the right to any indulgence he wanted. Even those he might not know he wanted.

He waited until the last traces of Gilfleur had become smoke and dissipated into the air around them. Then he moved while Potter was still staring at his hands as if his fingernails were dirty.

Potter gasped when Draco pinned him to the wall and pressed his mouth fiercely home. But he gave back the challenge a moment later, his hands locking into place on Draco's hips, his tongue thrusting as if he wanted to choke him. Draco backed away and steered him towards the bed.

"I don't—understand—" Potter gasped as they fell. "Why now? Don't you want to go back to the Manor and—"

Draco didn't bother answering with anything other than his tongue. The room had wards that should contain their destructive magic as they had contained the spells that caused Gilfleur's death, and he wanted Potter _now_. He also wanted to give Potter some surge of pleasure now, so that he wouldn't look back on this evening, their first victory, with utter distaste, and he wanted to offer an apology of sorts. He had told Potter they would kill Gilfleur together, and that hadn't happened because she and Draco were too close to equal.

Well, Draco could still bring other skills to this partnership.

He bit Potter's throat, and when Potter stared up at him with bright and heated eyes, leaned back so that their bodies almost ceased to touch. Potter's gaze started to turn away, as if he assumed that he should simply give up because Draco was leaving, but Draco conjured lube on his fingers with a murmured word.

The lube shone in the muffled light of the fire. Potter's gaze locked on the glitter, and Draco heard a hopeful, choked-back breath.

Merlin, Potter was _gagging _for it.

Draco snarled, and then lost control and knowledge of his movements for a few brief seconds. When he could see again, he was half-naked and Potter was getting there. Potter gave a snarl of his own, and suddenly his clothes were gone, swirling briefly in the air as colored motes before even that vanished.

Draco shuddered and tore into the suddenly uncertain expression on Potter's face with lips and tongue. If Potter didn't understand by _now _that Draco was turned on by exposure to his magic, then Draco hadn't been doing his job.

Potter's hands grew more confident, and by the time that Draco pulled off the last of his own clothes and reached for Potter's arse, he even had a smile that could have been mistaken for a mischievous one. He parted his legs and looked up at Draco with faux innocence, eyelids drooping as if he were about to go to sleep. "Like this?" he asked.

Draco bit down on his tongue savagely enough to draw blood as he stared at the small round hole that awaited his fingers. He reached down.

* * *

Harry could almost remember what it was like to be normal, now, and not be surprised that someone was looking at him with desire.

_Almost. _He was still sure there was nothing in his life before he had become the Wizengamot's executioner that approached the intensity of this experience.

He spread his legs further, until his hips ached and his feet dangled off the sides of the bed. "Well, come on," he said, because Malfoy's hand was moving slowly, as if he himself was surprised at what Harry was doing. "Can you take this or not?"

Malfoy choked and sighed, and leaned down to kiss him. Harry permitted that, but bit Malfoy's tongue when he tried to prolong the kiss. He wanted the fingers to get where they were going, and pushed himself backwards with a complicated movement of knees and thighs so that he would actually feel Malfoy some time this century.

Malfoy uttered a shuddering breath when his fingers entered Harry and stared with wide eyes. Harry wanted to laugh. He was the one in control, suddenly, and if he had his way, then the control wouldn't return to Malfoy until after he was safely inside Harry. Perhaps not even then, if Harry was the one who could handle it better.

"Are you better about moving your cock than your hand?" he asked.

Malfoy shuddered again and began working Harry open. Harry leaned his head back and concentrated on Malfoy's face to get him through the inevitable pain. He looked half-dazed, still, as though Harry's magic had knocked him on the head. Harry felt extremely smug. He had done something that would cause fear in many, the way he'd destroyed Gilfleur, but all Malfoy wanted was to get in bed with him.

_Well, that part of the goal is accomplished, at least, _Harry thought, and rocked on Malfoy's fingers to show willing. The pain had begun its slow transmutation into pleasure, and he rather thought he could take Malfoy now.

Malfoy still used another finger before he gave in to Harry's vocal curses and pleas and lined his cock up with Harry's entrance. Harry shoved himself down again, but this time he had really gone as far as he could, and Malfoy was the one who had to make the final movements, entering with many hisses and sighs through clenched teeth. Harry clamped down once or twice and each time won something close to a yelp.

Then Malfoy was all the way inside, more dazed than ever, embraced between Harry's sprawling legs, and they stared at each other.

"Now," Harry whispered.

Malfoy pumped his hips forwards in response to the command, and Harry felt a thrum of wonder, awe, and glee travel through him.

_I can command him, sometimes._

* * *

The warmth inside Potter was nothing new. So Draco told himself again and again while his hips snapped with more force than necessary, more force than he had told them they could use, and his cock tingled and his head spun and his balls felt as if they were going to spill their load long before he wanted them to.

Nothing new, but more intense than anything he had experienced before. There was that. And Potter lay beneath him and watched him with self-possessed pleasure, as if he were masturbating and thus solely responsible for what he felt, now and then arching his neck and writhing. It seemed he could read Draco's mind and know that he found those motions enticing.

It wasn't fair. Draco was on fire, and Potter looked as calm and cool as someone ordering a house-elf to get him a cup of water.

Draco probed deeper, twisting his hips, riding back and then shoving himself forwards, all because he _had _to see Potter's expression change. It finally wavered and broke when he hit something that had to be Potter's prostate, and Potter's fingers faltered as he reached up and clutched towards Draco. His face was pale now, and he moaned for what seemed like endless moments before he finally found words.

"_Draco_." That was the word, though stuttered and dragged out over a longer space of breath than Draco was accustomed to hearing it.

Draco laughed, and hoped that Potter would hear triumph and not contempt in the sound, which was all he really felt. Then he began to fuck Potter in earnest, watching the ripples that traveled through him with every thrust.

Potter never regained the control that he'd had at the beginning of the fuck, but he didn't lie there passively and accept Draco, either. He rolled his hips in counterpoint, tried to get more of Draco's cock inside his arse than actually existed by pushing downwards, moaned in protest when Draco briefly drew himself out to find a better position, and left long, stinging scratches along Draco's back. Draco bowed his head and touched Potter with his lips when he could, especially when Potter half-reared up and brought his mouth or his cheek or his nipples within biting distance.

His completion came blindingly fast, reminding him of spinning over a cliff on a waterfall. Draco sighed as he orgasmed, making sure that he leaned forwards to trigger Potter's and share the pleasure with him. Potter came a moment later, shaking hard enough in his release to nearly throw Draco off.

Draco dropped to the bed and closed his eyes, so content that it felt more obscene than the fuck had.

Potter nuzzled into his neck, pushed his hair aside, and bit down hard. Draco didn't even jump, it felt so natural. He made sure to leave his own mark on Potter's shoulder, and then lay there with heart racing and thoughts doing the same thing. They weren't _about _any specific subject; it was enough that he had them and that he was light and flying with wonder, desire, and delight.

He didn't know exactly what they were going to do next, but soon he would, and then they would do it.

The most important thing was that he now had complete confidence that they would conquer the Wizengamot and win their fight to conquer the wizarding world.

Together.


	11. Unite

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven—Unite_

Draco had a long time to think as he lay in the bed next to Potter; he didn't need as much sleep as Potter apparently did, and the feverish excitement that had been boiling in him since Gilfleur's death wouldn't let him rest anyway. He might as well put his mind to work hammering away at the shape of reality.

_Soon we will be the ones forging it, _he thought, and saliva flooded his mouth as he lay there. He licked his lips and then waited, but Potter slept on, head curled against Draco's shoulder. The noise he had made must not be as loud as it had seemed in the silence.

He considered the immediate reaction of the Wizengamot to Gilfleur's failure to appear, and smiled. With a few careful rumors and wide-eyed silences, he could plant the suspicion that she had left the country or withdrawn from the Wizengamot, leaving the battlefield to Draco, in order to plan her next move. By the time that people started to disbelieve, it wouldn't matter.

He considered other strategies and rejected the majority of them. There was always someone who would ask inconvenient questions, or a simple lack of time that would prevent them from conducting elaborate maneuvers. But two things remained clear.

First, they must perform enough of the rituals they had planned to give Potter competent control over his magic.

Second, they must move fast. Potter's strength and his own were their weapons. Draco knew his mind was quick, but he was new to working with Potter. They could not conduct a long campaign without people becoming suspicious, especially since the Wizengamot knew the flavor of Potter's magic so well. Swiftness and brutality were their best chance.

_We will conquer the wizarding world in a few days, _Draco thought, and laid his head back on the pillow with a small sigh. _I wonder what Potter will say to that when I tell him?_

Picturing Potter's amusing facial expression led to another thought, and he chuckled and shook his head.

_I am sorry to miss Risidell's._

* * *

"I don't see how we can do that."

Malfoy looked at him patiently. They were together again in the Manor—after a day of Harry wandering around his room, staring at the walls and trying to get used to the fact that he had successfully slain one Wizengamot member and not been charged for it, and Malfoy attending to his political duties—and Malfoy had just told him something insane. Harry shook his head, trying to cope with what lay behind the look Malfoy was giving him rather than the look itself.

"You really think we can do this, don't you?" he muttered.

"Of course we can," Malfoy said, and leaned across the table to pour another crystal glass full of wine. Harry tried to keep his eyes away from it, since he didn't think he should be drinking, but his nose twitched anyway, and he knew he'd probably end up swallowing it. "If we do as we must and get the rituals done tonight."

Harry had to snort. "We've both been drinking. What makes you assume that we can conduct the rituals without a mistake?"

"I never drink to excess," Malfoy said, so calmly that it sounded like a fact rather than a boast. "And you've had a large meal to fill your belly along with the wine. I would never have let you drink too much, either."

Harry studied Malfoy with a frown. Malfoy raised his eyebrows back, but seemed to realize he would gain nothing from rushing Harry—or perhaps realized he didn't understand why Harry was staring at all—and held his peace.

In reality, Harry was trying to decide how much trust Malfoy required from him and how much he could give. It was a lot, more than he'd bargained for, if he trusted Malfoy to make decisions about _Harry's _clarity of mind along with his own. Did he give in and potentially cause a disaster in the ritual? Or did he admit that Malfoy probably had some idea of what he was doing and agree?

_But probably isn't good enough._

Harry pushed the glass of wine away from himself, which made Malfoy's mouth tighten, but nodded to him before he could have an outburst. "I don't trust myself as much as you do. Let's go and perform the ritual as soon as we're finished."

"Of course," Malfoy said, eyelids falling like shutters over whatever emotion blazed in his face. "But we must have dessert first." He struck his spoon against the plate, and the dessert appeared on it. Harry jumped, and then told himself not to be stupid. How many times had he seen food appear like that on the plates in the Great Hall at Hogwarts?

But he wasn't a child anymore, and this wasn't Hogwarts. And he had never seen a dessert like this.

It appeared to be a castle, made of cream, icing, and frozen fruit, so delicately arranged that Harry held his breath in case he blew one rich tower down. Malfoy reached over, letting his spoon glide across the sugared dome, rich with slices of berries cut to resemble sapphires, and then broke the dome with a movement of his arm. Harry realized his mouth was open as if he was about to cry out against the palace's destruction and cleared his throat roughly, embarrassed.

Malfoy, eyes on him, pushed the plate closer. Harry looked at the castle, then at him, wondering what Malfoy wanted him to see. The strawberry rubies, peach stained glass windows, and wonderfully elaborate molding of gates didn't look that much different on one side of the castle than on the other.

But Malfoy nodded downwards, so Harry leaned over and looked in through the broken dome.

It showed a hidden bedroom; in fact, most of the castle looked hollow inside, rather than solid as Harry had assumed. In the center of the room was a large canopied bed, silver and green icing forming the curtains and the posts. And in the center of the bed were two figures that looked like them.

Harry looked up, caught Malfoy's eye, and swallowed. The way he was staring said that Harry was supposed to take this seriously. Harry looked down, hesitated, and let his finger trail across the black curls on the head of the figure that resembled him. Black cherries, maybe? The scraps of fruit wound about his fingers, catching delicately and then falling away. The body blurred into a smear of cream.

"An early victory," Malfoy said, and reached down to pluck himself out of the bed. Harry thought he was made of spun sugar, with the flesh of oranges for his hair. Malfoy ate himself with a few crunching bites and then leaned back and smiled at Harry.

Knowing this was a challenge, even if he didn't quite understand why, Harry settled for a glare and ate the figure that resembled him, trying not to get the fruit and icing all over his hand. It was a relief to accept a piece of the cake onto his own plate and be able to eat with a fork, though even then he felt the judging pressure of Malfoy's eyes on him.

* * *

Once again they stood in the room in his dungeons where he usually performed the rituals, but it was different this time. Light blazed from every wall; Draco had had house-elves bring down torches and light a fire in the hearth that usually went unused except to heat torture instruments, but even that was not enough, given the demands of the ritual. Draco had also cast a spell that made pure white light, without motion or warmth, shine down from the ceiling. Potter had hesitated, blinking and dazzled, when he first came down the stairs, but moved on at Draco's push.

In the center of the room, Draco created a normal ritual circle with no more than a thought and a flicker of his wand. There was a spell for that, and he had learned it long ago. The ritual he had found that might enhance Potter's control over his magic was not complicated in that respect; it simply took power and a finely balanced notion of when one should intervene to prevent that power from growing out of bounds. When Draco gestured for Potter to stand in the middle of the circle and Potter walked over the floor as though it contained Muggle explosives, Draco hadn't been able to refrain from rolling his eyes.

But now he stood where he was supposed to, in the exact center of the ring—Draco had cast other spells to give them the measurements—with Draco outside. Draco nodded to him and began to walk around the circle. Potter started to turn to face him, but stopped at Draco's cold snap of a command.

Draco closed his eyes and let the frustration float away. He was going to win a prize greater than he had dreamed could be his in just a few days. There was no reason to rush, no reason to feel discomfort. It was the Wizengamot who would feel discomfort, Risidell who looked at him as if he were a disappointment for making enemies, which was inevitable, and the other credulous fools who had lapped up the rumors about Gilfleur going abroad.

When Draco's body thrummed with pleasure, always the best mental condition in which to work any ritual, he opened his eyes.

Potter was watching him with a hopeful expression. His hands were crossed in front of his body, but he dropped them when Draco gave him a stern look. Draco had tried to be as frank with Potter as he could about the chances of their ritual succeeding, and it wouldn't if Potter moved around too much or acted too tense. The magic depended most of all on Draco's state of mind, not Potter's, but it was delicate. Draco might pick up Potter's agitation and unwittingly reflect it back.

Draco turned to the circle, took a deep breath, and spread his hands.

A line of shimmering white light trailed them, as though the spells he had cast earlier had flown down to outline his fingers. Draco smiled at them, refusing to notice the way Potter had sucked in air as if he was trying to breathe in a smoky room, and then began to turn in a slow circle. The light trailed behind him, wavering like a ribbon blown by a faint breeze.

When Draco had completed one full turn, he had a ring of white light around him at head height. He locked eyes with Potter and was pleased to see him staring in fascination. While not as ideal as complete peace, having Potter interested in what was going on would make a nice change from uncertainty.

Draco spread his hands again, still glowing with the light, and blew on the ribbon. It wavered one more time and then soared away from him—Draco ducked, or otherwise the magic would have passed through his head and they would have had to start all over—and towards Potter. Draco had given Potter careful instructions, but he watched now with narrowed eyes. Potter seemed to ignore instructions a good portion of the time.

Potter did beautifully now, reaching up one of those arms Draco had felt wrapped around his back not twenty-four hours ago and snatching the ribbon from midair with a carefully curved fist. The ribbon swayed back and forth as he caught it, but didn't break. Draco swallowed and chided himself for tension in turn. There was no reason to think that the magic would fail to notice, although now most of the ritual's onus was on Potter.

Again Potter followed instructions and turned in a slow circle, offering the ribbon to every corner of the lighted dungeon room. He was sweating, but the expression on his face was one of almost pure concentration. Intensity. It contained nothing damaging, Draco thought, and breathed again.

Potter knelt down when he came back to his starting point and held his hands out in front of him. The ribbon writhed like a living thing and tied his wrists together in light. Draco knew from experiencing a similar ritual that there would be nothing physical to feel from such a bondage, nothing but the shining around one's skin, but Potter had started to tremble anyway.

Then Draco squinted. No, Potter wasn't shaking. Instead, a shimmering outline projected from his body, one that grew firmer as Draco watched. It rose and grew, until a second Potter, faint and bright as a mirage, was kneeling beside the first. Arms held out in front of him, hands tied with light, eyes closed, the only thing that distinguished him was that transparency.

Draco waited. He knew what the ritual was _supposed _to do; that was very far from assuming it was the thing that _would _happen in all cases.

The second Potter began to flicker back and forth like a candle flame. The real one closed his eyes more tightly and drew in a huff of breath that sounded almost like a sob. Draco took a step forwards and then forced himself to wait. It was not as though he could cross the circle without disrupting the ritual, and Potter would either manage this on his own or he would not.

_I wonder what's passing through his mind?_

* * *

Harry couldn't remember the last time he had felt this exalted.

The magic entered into him with a confidence and a—a _finesse _that had become unfamiliar since the botched ritual. It wound his snarling magic in inevitable coils and pulled it to the side. Harry had never found something that could resist him until he met Gilfleur's defensive spells, and those were not the same thing. They merely shifted aside the brunt of some of the force, and he had conquered in the end.

This was firm, a barrier. Despite the bonds that Harry knew he wore on his wrists, he experienced the spell as a wall that drove through his soul and separated the magic into controllable and uncontrollable portions. Then, while it stood firm, the power itself flowed under the wall in one direction, while the wildness flowed in another. What was left to Harry was purified, freed, and tamed.

He wanted to cry when he realized it was working. He did not, but more because joy stunned him speechless, rather than because he remembered that he shouldn't break the silence that the ritual needed.

He wanted to open his eyes, but Malfoy had warned him that the room might look strange in the beginning of the ritual, and he didn't want to get disoriented. So he rested there, and the light worked, and the last of the chaos left him. Magic remained in his possession, without teeth that could chew his joints or claws that could scratch the skin off his back.

The magic shimmered around him—he could see that much by the gentle pressure of the white light through his eyelids—and then abruptly vanished. Harry remained still, not sure if he should trust that or not. Malfoy said rituals sometimes got off to false starts, or appeared to pause halfway through, when in reality the magic was gathering to begin a second sequence of events.

"You can look now, Potter."

Malfoy's voice was oddly subdued. Harry blinked, opened his eyes, and turned his head. He was alone in the middle of the circle, although Malfoy had warned him that the ritual would form a second image of himself, a twin, that he might see. It was the twin that the wildness would go into, and when the image disappeared from the world, the wildness was supposed to go with it as well. Considering how much better he felt, Harry thought the two of them might already have departed.

He stood up and glanced down at his wrists. The ribbon of light was gone. Harry uncrossed them and stretched them above his head. He could still feel his power, flowing beneath the surface of his skin, rising further when he called it, sinking down when he told it to, but it was no longer the restless force it had been.

"Do something," Malfoy said, his voice soft but intense.

Harry nodded at him and spun around, aiming at the far wall. Malfoy had warned him that the ritual would not change how he used his magic; Harry still had to think of a target and give it a command rather than use an incantation. But he ought to be able to do more now. "Clean it," he said aloud, so Malfoy could share his thoughts.

The magic blasted out of him with a strength that shook Harry's teeth in his skull. He could see it as a fountain of something so brilliant that it could have been either water or fire. Whatever it was, it struck the far dungeon wall between two of the torches Malfoy had set going through this ritual and _chewed _into the dirt there, lifting it off in a visible layer. Then the fountain turned on the dirt and ate it. What was left was polished stone, shining. Harry thought it might never have been so clean since the foundations of the Manor were laid.

In the silence, Malfoy cleared his throat. "Can we perform the other ritual I talked about now?" he asked.

Harry looked over his shoulder at him and nodded. He couldn't have spoken now for Galleons or worlds.

And then he burst out laughing and leaped the circle to dash to Malfoy's side, and Malfoy's hands were understanding and tight on his shoulders, his tongue just as eager to share in the kiss of victory.

* * *

"To the left. Walk three slow steps and then halt."

Draco droned the words to Potter, not daring to raise his voice. He hoped Potter would hear and understand him. Even more than the one Potter had endured, this ritual demanded utter tranquility, an air almost of boredom.

That was difficult, because when Draco thought about what they might accomplish today, he had to bite the inside of his cheek.

Potter did as he instructed and then turned his head and studied Draco. His expression was solemn, but Draco could see a muscle jumping in the side of his neck. He knew as well as Draco did what this ritual could mean. What surprised Draco was that he seemed to be struggling with the same excitement, rather than resentment or fear.

Draco allowed a flicker of a smile and then returned to his bored poise. He glanced at the thread of woven grass that connected them, running from his left hand to Potter's right. He touched it just to make sure it was holding strong and then said, "Use it to draw me towards you. Pull slowly enough that it won't break apart."

Potter's raised eyebrow said he had his doubts about that, but he began to do as Draco suggested. Draco discovered that he was trembling with nerves and bit his lip in annoyance. He _knew _he could manage this. He wasn't going to hold back and lose out on what he needed, what he desired, and what Potter wanted because he was frightened.

_I shall never be frightened again, if we succeed at this._

He got closer and closer to Potter, and each time the braid of grass seemed about to unwind, it would steady. Draco swallowed. He'd been able to use magic to braid the rope, and he trusted his charms in a way that he didn't trust grass woven by hand.

He reached Potter. Potter stared into his eyes and then moved his left hand. In it he held the silver knife that Draco had given to him—the enchanted knife that he had kept beside his bed for years now and picked p on the night that he had thought Potter was attacking.

_Last night, _Draco realized with a little shock. _It was only last night._ It seemed that years had grown wings since then.

"Like this?" Potter whispered, but he seemed to be asking confirmation of himself rather than Draco. Before Draco could reply, he had turned the knife and made the cut on the side of Draco's neck that the ritual required.

Draco winced and closed his eyes. The knife could not kill him unless wielded in anger, but the sting of the magic and the blade together was still hard to bear. He heard Potter gulp as the blood began to trickle down his throat.

"I'm not sure—" Potter began.

"You have to be," Draco said, in the same resigned voice that he'd been using so far, but he opened his eyes and gave Potter a glare.

Perhaps it was the glare, perhaps it was the vision of the rewards they would gain if they did this correctly, but something made Potter nod and then cut the side of his neck in turn. His face went white with the shock.

Draco leaned forwards, watching Potter to make sure that he would imitate the gesture, and fastened his mouth over Potter's wound.

The blood that invaded his mouth _buzzed. _Draco knew it should taste like copper, but instead it was thick oil that burst with the scents of sunflowers, and then roses, and then rotten meat. Draco gagged, but kept drinking anyway. He heard Potter making similar muffled noises against his throat.

Against all the rules that Draco knew, his body chose that moment to find Potter's sucking sexy and tried to get an erection. Draco rolled his eyes and continued his own sucking, which was all he could do.

And the oily blood transformed.

Draco gasped as it became sweet and intangible in his mouth, pure power and pure pleasure. He licked his lips and then opened them wide, because it was intolerable to think that a bit of that magic might escape him. Potter was lashing his tongue out in the same fashion and moaning.

They drank at each other, holding each other close, while the grass rope dissolved into their bodies and the air turned blue with ringing flames. Draco knew the ritual would have been spectacular to watch from the outside, but he could barely think about that. He dug his fingers into Potter's arms instead and _sucked _and _sucked _and _sucked_. He drank, and the magic traveled into him and traveled out.

Finally, Draco's tongue was licking at unnatural scabs. He swallowed disappointment as well as the last of the blood, and stepped away.

Potter stood still with an expression of bliss on his face. Then he opened his eyes, swaying on his feet slightly, and squinted at Draco. "That—that was what I thought it was, right?" he asked hoarsely. "I mean, we traded magic? Does that mean that you can destroy like I do, now?"

Draco shook his head regretfully. He didn't know if there was a ritual for that. There might be a series of rituals, but they didn't have time to look them up, research, and perform them. "It means that we're linked together, now," he said. "We can cast spells in battle more quickly and we can act together as if we had trained for years. Not a large advantage in the scheme of things, but worth more than any other we could have right now."

"Not large, my arse," said Potter, and didn't seem to notice the way Draco's eyes darted towards that part of his body. "This is—that felt _better _than anything." He looked at Draco with lowered eyelids then. "Except last night."

Draco leaned forwards and fastened his lips on Potter's. He received a kiss that nearly knocked him off his feet, made his groin ache, and made him wish there was a bed in the dungeons.

He pulled back with a breathless sigh. "We have to rest," he said. "Tomorrow, we're going to go out there and change the world."

Potter laughed. "And _then _we can fuck each other, after we've fucked over everyone else."

Draco spoke a sentence that he wouldn't have thought he'd ever speak. "I like the way you think, Potter."


	12. And Conquer

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of _Ragnarok. _Thank you for reading.

_Chapter Twelve—And Conquer_

"You are ready."

Harry tilted his head in acknowledgment of Malfoy's words, but he didn't stop looking into the fire. Malfoy's Patronus stood in front of him, stretching its wings and settling its feathers continually. Harry didn't know for certain, since he had never watched his own Patronus for long periods of time, but he would wager that that was a sign of Malfoy's own nervousness.

_Good to know it's not just me._

"It seems so strange," he murmured, because Malfoy's silent presence demanded an explanation from him. "To think that we might actually conquer the world, in the way that Voldemort dreamed of doing and didn't manage to."

The cormorant shook its silvery wings again and turned to preen the middle of its back. Malfoy's voice still came uninterrupted from the beak, though. "You must remember that our ambitions are different from his. I have no reason to want to destroy Muggleborns and the others he targeted. But they could give themselves reasons, if they started using the rituals or rebelling against us in other ways."

"Be as benevolent a ruler as you can, then," Harry murmured without taking his eyes from the flames. This was one of the last times he would sit in the room beneath the Wizengamot headquarters that had been his home for so long—unless, of course, he wanted to come back here. It was a strange thing to think about. "Then they won't have a reason to rebel against you. Publish the Wizengamot's private documents," he added. "That ought to prove to any rebels how far they've been fooled and what a corrupt government they've been living under all this time."

"What about you, Potter?"

Startled, Harry raised his eyes. There was a sharpness in Malfoy's voice that told him this wasn't part of the arguments that could simply be dismissed. "What about me?" he asked, feeling a bit stupid. "I'll be with you, of course, but I don't think I could persuade people not to rebel on my own. If anything, I'll be a target of attempts to start a rebellion, since they'll think of me as a hero until I teach them better."

"No, you idiot," said the cormorant. It was watching him with Malfoy's eyes, too, as well as Malfoy's voice. "You're going to be ruling beside me. You should adopt your own policies and tell me when I'm going too far. You'll probably notice such things more than I will," he added.

Harry blinked. "I thought—" he said, and then fell silent, reviewing his past conversations with Malfoy. Yes, in fact, he had been the stupid one. Malfoy had been the one proposing something like this all along.

"What?" The cormorant hopped towards him, ruffling its feathers aggressively.

"You did say that I would be your equal," Harry whispered. "I just assumed that you would be the one doing the ruling, and I would help you with the fighting and nothing else. Unless a rebellion actually did arise, of course."

"That's like you, Potter." Malfoy's voice was acerbic, but with an undertone of comprehension that made Harry relax. "You think you're not good enough to hold the positions that you assign to other people without hesitation. You wouldn't do anything without permission if you had the choice. I shouldn't be surprised. The Wizengamot got you used to being commanded, and a few fucks and a few rituals aren't enough to change matters."

"Shut up," Harry muttered, feeling his face heat. He knew Malfoy was right, and the sensation of freedom was probably what made him drift through these hours, dreamy and lost, but he still resented the way it had been pointed out.

"Stop being stupid," Malfoy snapped, and then his voice became low and business-like. "You'll respond to my call after I've spent a few hours in the Wizengamot building and I can be sure we have all the members we'll collect for that day. Tomorrow is an important vote. I expect general attendance."

Harry nodded. "I know. And when you call me, then I'll burst up through the floor with my power blazing around me. How many do you want to kill?" He experienced a moment of wonder that he was sitting here and deciding the fates of his former masters. Then again, Malfoy would say that he deserved the chance, given the way they had used him. Harry had to admit that sounded reasonable to him.

"Yes," Malfoy said. His voice was full of deep satisfaction that made Harry shift, because it got him hard. "That's it exactly. As for how many, that will depend on their sense. We might have to sacrifice several to make the point to the rest. I would leave most alive if I could, because there are some key positions they might be suited for under us."

"I wish we could kill them all," Harry muttered. He didn't believe the words. He wanted to see how Malfoy would respond to them. "They'll just become the focus of future rebellions if we leave them alive."

"And we would become the focus of blood feuds," Malfoy said dryly. "I thought as you do at one time. But there will be other times to fight, and people foolish enough to force us to it. This first step is the decisive one. Be patient."

Harry nodded, and lay back on the bed as the cormorant shivered and vanished. His head still whirled. He was sure he would have trouble sleeping.

He didn't, in fact. He was surprised by how quickly the darkness closed in, and how still his thoughts fell after the last one that trembled through his head like the tolling of a great bell.

_Tomorrow, the world changes._

* * *

Draco glanced around the anteroom before the Wizengamot's voting chamber and gave a thin smile. Yes, most of the members were there, excluding a few on diplomatic journeys and some too ill to readily make it.

And Gilfleur, of course.

He extended his hands in front of him and squeezed air, then moved towards Risidell. The man stood there and watched him come with bright, suspicious eyes. Draco was sure that he had certain thoughts about what had happened to Gilfleur and if Draco was involved in it at all. But he hadn't said anything so far. He probably wanted to wait for more evidence.

_Too bad for him that it'll be too late by then, _Draco thought as he gave a friendly nod to Risidell and then turned and studied the other Wizengamot members.

"What are we here for, really?" he murmured.

"What?" Risidell edged closer to him. His voice had a crystalline keenness that Draco was glad to hear. It made what he had to do next easier.

"What is our purpose?" Draco asked, turning and staring at him. "Anyone who thinks that we actually serve the people of the wizarding world is mad. But most of us wouldn't say that our greatest ambition is to sit in a stuffy room and vote on legislation that only matters to us once in a while. So why is this position so craved and sought-after and fought-over?"

Risidell frowned and shook his head. "You were one of those who fought for it. I think you should be able to answer that."

"My answer might be different from yours," Draco said. "It would certainly be different from the answer that someone like Kellerston or Gilfleur might give." He paused, then added, "Though I suspect that Kellerston's motive was provided by someone else."

"Say what you mean, Malfoy, or say nothing at all." Risidell's voice was sharpened into a throwing knife.

Draco smiled and turned his head back, scanning the room for Kellerston. He hovered near the doors into the speaking chamber, it turned out, and his eyes were hot and his hands clasped together as though he wanted to squeeze drops of blood from a stone. Draco raised his eyebrows at him, and Kellerston grimaced and seemingly fought down the urge to actually spit in his direction.

"Say what you mean, Malfoy," Risidell repeated. He sounded a bit calmer this time, but Draco still wouldn't want to be placed in an empty room with him.

Then he remembered how close he was to revealing his power, and wanted to laugh. There was nothing Risidell could do to hurt him now.

"I will," he said, and turned around so swiftly that Risidell was forced to step back. "_Potter, come forth._"

Risidell's face began to change, but Draco was no longer interested in watching him except to make sure that the man didn't cast against him. He stepped back and fastened his eyes on the floor instead.

It shook, and then the stone slid aside like waves of water or silk. Draco wanted to applaud—Potter had judged the matter to a nicety, making others have to scramble while leaving a platform on which Draco could stand—but he didn't want to distract from the spectacle that was Ragnarok coming forth at last.

* * *

Harry heard the call echoing in his bones, the way Malfoy had told him he would.

That was a result of the ritual between them, Harry knew—at least intellectually. The ritual that had bound them together made it easier for them to sense each other, as well, or at least the sounds or movements that they might make which were directed to each other.

But emotionally, it was something else. It was like words that reached into Harry's heart and literally tugged on those nonexistent heartstrings people were supposed to have. He lifted his hands and destroyed the layers of stone and wards that separated him from the Wizengamot's antechamber because that was the plan. What he _wanted_, though, was to Apparate through time and space to Draco's side and never leave again.

He could do the same thing to Malfoy if he wanted, he reminded himself while his heart spiraled through his chest and the wards fell before him and the stone sheared and parted and plunged. He had as much power as Malfoy did in this situation, or so Malfoy claimed, and Harry was inclined to believe him.

As much. Perhaps not more.

But the important part was that the wards were screaming and falling around him, and the stone was crumbling into watery dust as it touched his skin, and Harry still had to rise to Malfoy's level—literally, not in any other way. He extended his hands parallel to the floor and told his magic what to do.

Up he went soaring, from the depths where he had lain like a concealed dragon gnawing the roots of the world-tree for so many years. It wasn't flying or levitation. He told the magic to make the ground reject him and then renew the bond when he wanted it renewed, and that was what his magic did.

He wavered and twisted in midair, but he knew that would make him more terrifying to someone who knew nothing about the magic, instead of ridiculous. He landed beside his partner and nodded coolly to him, then turned his head to scan the room full of staring, stuttering, stumbling Wizengamot members.

Malfoy touched him on the shoulder, then low on the back, as if searching for the best place to rest his hand. Harry stretched in response. He liked the touches for their own sake, he thought. How long since he could say that about anything?

"What does this mean?" That was Risidell. Harry had always thought he was a bit smarter than the others. At least he accepted that things _had _changed now, and wouldn't try to pretend that nothing had and they could ignore the circumstances.

Malfoy turned towards him. His face shone like the heart of a star, and on seeing it, all Harry's doubts that this might be the right thing to do collapsed. He was content to step back and let Malfoy answer for the present. He knew how to use political language better than Harry, but Harry knew better how to destroy.

They were united. They were two parts of a whole, both smoothly functioning, without discussion, at what they did best. Harry had to close his eyes from the sweetness of it all.

He opened them quickly enough when a man on the other side of the room moved forwards with a scream, his hand lashing out, with his wand in it, as if there was a stone wall in front of him that he wanted to push over.

Harry only vaguely recognized him, but that didn't matter. He was someone who was trying to hurt Draco or Harry or both of them—most likely both, since hurting one of them would damage the other—and that made him Harry's problem. Harry spun one hand in a circle in front of him and again told his magic what he wanted. It agreed with a small, sighing hiss in the back of his mind and shot out like a rope.

The attacking man shivered and slowed and then stopped. Marble had replaced his skin, and lumps of coal his eyes. His arms clamped to his sides, while his feet froze in place. His face was seamed and cracked, and Harry shook his head regretfully. He had meant to turn the man into a perfect statue, but it seemed that his own anger had interfered with that.

Draco's hand brushed his back again, while his mouth brushed Harry's ear. "Well done, Harry."

_I'm not alone in wanting to call him by his first name, either. _Harry turned his head, his eyelashes fanning out along his cheek, and felt Draco's breath whistle close by. Only the presence of others in the room kept him from a kiss, Harry decided.

"I will know what this is." Risidell was trying to sound authoritative and calm, but he was shaken badly, and it showed. His voice had more cracks in it than the man's face did. Harry opened his eyes in interest, to see how Draco would respond.

* * *

Draco had been caught off-guard when Kellerston lunged, though it would have been no trouble to do something about it. But Harry had gestured instead, without a wand, without a word, and Kellerston had become a statue. And perhaps Harry hadn't meant to indicate this—in fact, Draco was almost sure he hadn't—but the cracks in Kellerston's face made him look as though he was suffering in torment.

The others were frightened, now. It was the best demonstration he and Harry could have given, Draco thought, because it obliged the others to pay more attention to them than they would have to threats. They pressed back and away from Draco and Harry, leaving only Risidell standing anywhere near.

And Risidell's face was seamed with angry perplexity, as well as a dawning suspicion—perhaps—of the loss of control that this attack implied. The beginning of the end, Draco thought as he answered. At least, the beginning of the end of the Wizengamot.

Was Risidell, who had spent ten years in the most powerful body in wizarding Britain, capable of comprehending that on the first try? Draco thought not.

"Harry and I are allies," he said casually. "You never wanted to treat him as more than a tool, whereas I did. You have wasted him on executions. He and I are going to do more than that, grander things than that. You are looking at the two most powerful wizards in Britain. Perhaps two of the most powerful in the world, although I don't know about that," he added modestly. A touch of modesty was always a good thing, he had learned while struggling upwards in the past decade. Underrate your own abilities and you not only looked good, but surprised those who might try to take advantage of you.

"Monstrous," said someone from the side, who also seemed to have realized what Harry and Draco meant to do.

"Impossible," said Risidell. "You must know it is, Malfoy. Do you know how many people will oppose you?"

Draco thought it time for another demonstration. He turned to Harry. "That man you turned to marble has a worthless grudge against me," he said. "Against any Death Eater, really. We won't need him later."

"Oh, is that so?" Harry said, in just the right sort of casual, bright tone, and made a gesture with his hand as though sending back badly cooked food.

The statue of Kellerston exploded. Marble rose in a fountain to the ceiling and then fell again with a roar, and the Wizengamot members screamed piercingly and cowered as though they were being covered with bits of blood and flesh instead of the stone that it really was. And Draco knew that was the end of Kellerston. There was no reason to mourn him, there was no reason to worry further about him, and that was thanks to Harry.

He pressed a hand against Harry's cheek, hard enough to make him turn his head. Then he leaned in and kissed Harry gently on the lips.

When he pulled back, he saw a transfixed look on Risidell's face. It was followed a moment later by fear so intense that Draco snorted. "So you finally understand," he murmured. "What we are, and what binds us."

"An alliance with us would still be best," Risidell said. He was trying not to pant in his fear, but he was unsuccessful. Draco watched him with cool eyes, and waited patiently for him to be done. "We could admit Potter among our ranks. If he fulfilled some of the basic requirements—"

"Your requirements are done," Draco said. "As is the period of time in which you mattered to the fate of the wizarding world. We mean to rule by power, and we cannot do a worse job than you have. Not when my desire to keep everyone under my control is united with Harry's understanding of what is right." He was half-aware of Harry jerking beside him and turning to stare, but that didn't matter. _Harry _might be astonished to hear that he possessed any compassion or principles, but Draco knew the truth.

"You cannot simply do this, you know." Risidell was trying to conceal his fear with a lower tone of voice this time, and also perhaps trying to hearten the other Wizengamot members who were pressing and pulling away from him, staring in mute disbelief at their new lords. "There will be resistance."

"Resistance that we can conquer," Draco said, and nodded to the ruins of Kellerston. "Unless you think that we'll hesitate to do this again."

"You cannot destroy everyone that you mean to rule!" Risidell said, and his voice soared into a squeak. He cleared his throat. Draco thought about sniggering, but Harry did it for him.

"Do you think that everyone is going to contest us?" Draco asked, and smiled at him. "I don't believe so. Oh, yes, the Aurors will fight, and some of the pure-blood families who don't want to be ruled by anyone, or who think that we're going to impose changes they disagree with. But you've done too good a job of weakening in the Ministry in the last ten years. _They _will do what we tell them to, since they've got used to having someone order them about. And the wizarding population does what the Ministry and the Wizengamot tell them to do. I don't plan to torture and kill indiscriminately, and neither does Harry. Dark Lords like the ones we've fought in the past were stupid. We have learned from their mistakes."

"You can't," Risidell said. "You can't simply destroy the structures of the past and expect everyone to roll over and accept them."

"I told you," Draco said patiently. He wondered how Risidell had risen this high without the ability to listen and process the information being fed him. Perhaps he simply had attained the height where he felt privileged to ignore most such information. "We don't think everyone will, just as we don't expect everyone to fight. Some people in both categories, yes. But most of the wizarding population desires that their lives go on, and when we promise that, we'll drain a large part of the rebellious impulse."

"What do you _want_?" Risidell looked as though he'd start tearing his hair in a moment.

"Freedom," Harry said bluntly. "Freedom of a kind that means no one can ever use me again."

"I gave you my answer on the day that you interviewed me for my position in the Wizengamot," Draco said, and smiled with his teeth bright. "Power."

"We can give you that," Risidell said. "You know that the Wizengamot has the greatest power in the wizarding world; you've referred to it yourself. Why not stay among us and let us help you to your goals?"

* * *

Harry tensed. This was the kind of appeal that would have taken him in when he was more naïve or more depressed. He hoped that Draco wouldn't fall for the same thing.

Draco's laughter curled through the room, high and human and reassuring.

"You had that power, yes," he said. "That was why I joined you. And then I learned of Harry's existence, and that changed. Now you do not have the power to offer me, since we have taken it away from you and changed its nature. Grow resigned to that, and we may yet be allies."

Risidell bowed his head as if defeated, but Harry could remember him looking that way in front of other Wizengamot members he had argued with, particularly when they had disagreed about who Harry should execute next. He had never lost those arguments in the end. Harry kept a sharp eye on Risidell's hands and watched the way they shifted to the left.

"Perhaps what you say is true," Risidell whispered. "Serving under someone who would treat us well enough to keep us alive is to be preferred to a messy death."

Draco nodded in satisfaction. "You are an old political hand, and others of you are as well," he said, turning so that he could capture the eyes of the rest of the Wizengamot. Harry wondered if he realized that they were staring at him with undisguised hostility. "We could work together. We might—"

Risidell moved in a smooth, powerful fashion that must have won him duels many times before. His hand was in place, cutting across his body, and his mouth moved in the incantation but he didn't speak it aloud.

Harry had suspected, though, and was ready.

His magic created a shimmering barrier of whirling motes between him and Draco and the rest of the room, changing the nature of the air itself. Only Harry knew that those motes were made of steel and that they were edged with spikes that would chop any magic—or any flesh—that passed between them apart. Risidell's curse arched forwards and dissipated between them the same way that any other spell would have.

Draco turned his head and stared at the whirling motes in the air for a long moment. Then he reached out and stroked down Harry's shoulder.

"Thank you," he said.

Harry inclined his head. His heart was pounding, and he didn't know why. It wasn't as though Risidell had come close to achieving his goal. Perhaps it had something to do with the expression on Draco's face when he cast the spells that took away Risidell's wand and bound his hands, or the deathly stillness of the others.

Draco stepped around the barrier and looked at Risidell closely. Then he shook his head. "We could have used you," he said in a voice that had hardly any breath behind it.

Harry knew what that meant without asking. Draco stepped back and gestured, but the gesture was slower than the cloud of steel motes. Harry sent them forwards at the pressure of a single thought, his magic so marvelously obedient that it made his mouth dry.

Risidell shrieked before the motes attacked him.

Once.

They shredded him apart, digging into cloth and flesh and muscle and bone without slowing, because there was no barrier that could oppose them. This time, the Wizengamot members really _could _have ducked flying blood and tiny bits of human being if they wanted. But none of them did. They stood there, faces incredulous, bodies like stone, and let the blood cover their robes and stripe their faces and hair.

Harry stepped back and waited for Draco to clean up, because Draco had to show them that he had the powerful magic at his beck and call, too, and not only the ability to command Harry. Draco picked it up more quickly than Harry would have thought he could, probably because of the ritual that linked them, and smiled as he used his wand to scrape his palm and then blew across it.

The blood and flesh vanished. The remaining men and women trembled. Some knelt. Others looked longingly at the door, but no one actually made a move. They were waiting for permission, Harry thought. They were successfully cowed. And a few were looking at them with eyes full of sick longing, wanting to know how they had done that and how they could gain the same magic for their own.

Harry started. He hadn't thought of that before, but the rituals were weapons in and of themselves. He and Draco could distribute knowledge in dribs and drabs, and make sure that only those they truly trusted had access to any kind of enhanced power. They would be forever ahead of their "disciples," and he knew that Draco, at least, was wary enough to make sure that they created no accidental threat to their prominence.

_I've never thought like that before._

But he rejoiced, because it meant he could learn a new kind of thought, and turned to Draco to find out what he was going to do next.

* * *

Draco swept the remaining Wizengamot with his gaze, and nodded. For the moment, he and Harry were in control of them. That might not last when they had time to think and reach a breathing distance, but Draco didn't intend for them to have that.

"You are going to swear Unbreakable Vows to us," he said crisply. "Divide into pairs. One of you will be the Bonder for the other, and then they in turn will take over that role when the next one swears to us."

There was a rustle of movement at that, but Harry raised an eyebrow and stepped forwards to stand beside Draco. They gulped and began to divide.

Draco could tell how it was going to be. This temporary victory would dissipate—if they let it. Instead, they would secure it by means of Unbreakable Vows, carefully chosen, and then spread their conquest over the wizarding world in short order, killing where they had to, adopting when they could, disrupting ordinary lives as little as possible.

Draco had little interest in the ordinary.

He looked at Harry, who stood beside him, head tilted back, hands planted on his hips, face bright and fierce and free, and felt a surge of longing that nearly knocked him to his knees in turn. He leaned forwards, captured Harry's attention with a tap on the chin, and kissed him again.

Harry kissed him back, more aggressive than he had ever been before, and squeezed his arse. Draco laughed, where before he would have been angry. It wasn't a sign of weakness or sentiment in front of this particular audience, because they were so much more powerful than this particular audience that there was no way they could threaten Draco and Harry.

Draco could see the future that stretched ahead of him with this particular partner, as strong as he was, as proud, and as determined to remain in power, and the sweetness made him lick his lips.

He took Harry's hand as the first of the Wizengamot came forwards to swear.

**The End.**


End file.
